


The Ghost in Her Life

by Joyce (Alysswolf)



Series: Ghost Series [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Death, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Gen, Ghosts, Unconventional Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alysswolf/pseuds/Joyce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An accident radically changes the partnership between Mulder and Scully while opening Scully up to extreme possibilities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost in Her Life

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank my two excellent and hardworking editors: Kathleen and Meredith who helped me navigate the treacherous waters of angst. I would also like to thank Vicki Moseley for a casual comment during our correspondence that sparked this idea. And, last but not least, a tip of the top hat to an old movie called "Topper."

"YES!"

Dana Scully, normally the epitome of a reserved, scientific FBI agent, leaped to her feet screaming as her partner's bat slammed the ball deep into center field, past the lunging shortstop to drop just in front of the frantically diving outfielder.

"Way to go! Your fielders' can't catch!"

A grin of pure delight lit up her face as Mulder hit second base standing up and wisely decided to be satisfied with a double. Their last batter, a smart-ass junior agent from Violent Crimes, had foolishly tried to push a respectable single into a double and ended up caught in a murderous rundown between first and second base.

"Yeah, well we're still a run ahead, Dana. Taggert can take Ambercrombie with his pitching hand tied behind his back."

Agent Frank Haverscomb, computer whiz kid of Bank Fraud, grinned at her. A young Nordic geek by his own admission, Haverscomb nonetheless was agile enough to be a valued shortstop even if he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a bat. They had been friends at the Academy and remained friends even after Scully's descent into the basement world of the X-Files. Haverscomb played for five innings before a sprained ankle banished him to the spectators' benches. 

"Well, I would be willing to up that wager to twenty dollars if you think your pitcher is that hot," Scully challenged him with a grin of her own.

Scully had been engaging in a running bet with him since he had plopped down beside her somewhere in the middle of the fifth inning of the annual FBI charity baseball game between the Blues, agents and support staff from Bank Fraud and related white-collar crime divisions, and the Grays, staffed mainly by Violent Crimes along with anyone else they could rope onto their team. 

"Hmmm, I might be willing to take your money, Dana, but come on now, do you really think Ambercrombie can actually lay a bat on that ball? He's struck out swinging the last three times at bat. He's worse than I am with a bat."

"The kid's just nervous. This is his first game with these sharks. Give him a chance. Mulder told me he used to play minor-league ball and was considered quite a power hitter. I think my money's safe." Scully laughed as she laid another five on the bench between them.

"You're on, but it's going to be like taking candy from a baby. You just remember, I did warn you."

Scully merely smiled and turned her attention back to the field and her partner. Mulder was dirty, sweaty and looked like he was having the time of his life. To no one's surprise but her own, 'Spooky' Mulder was the linchpin of the team with four hits, driving in two of his team's five runs, and a spectacular slide into home, which accounted for the dirt which now covered him from head to toe. There he was, dancing on and off second base, keeping the pitcher on edge, all the while grinning like a twelve-year-old kid.

The day was hot, but miracle of miracles, there was a breeze blowing which kept the July humidity down to a bearable 85 percent. The late afternoon sunlight sparkled playfully off AD Skinner's glasses and occasionally off his bald head whenever he took off his cap. Skinner had been roped into acting as first-base umpire and stood there enduring the July sun with a rather resigned look on his face. The assembled agents and their cheering sections were seizing the opportunity to berate the umpires with slightly more enthusiasm than he found comfortable. One too many 'kill the umpire' jokes, perhaps.

Scully had never seen Mulder quite so happy. For one afternoon, she saw the young boy he never got to be shine through. Not for the first time, she wondered what kind of man Fox Mulder would have been if Samantha had never been taken. She sometimes wished she could have known that man-who-never-was.

Mulder suddenly sprang off the base, looking for all the world as if he intended to steal third base right under the noses of the frantically screaming basemen.

"For God's sake, Mulder, be careful, I'm looking forward to that fourth day," Scully muttered, a bit louder than she meant to from the puzzled look Haverscomb gave her.

Scully screamed enthusiastically as the beleaguered pitcher spun wildly in response to the screams behind him, and threw a wild pitch in an effort to pick Mulder off. Mulder dove for the safety of second-base and grinned up at the frustrated baseman who had had to leap off the bag to prevent the ball from sailing over his head into the outfield.

Scully couldn't hear what Mulder said, but the man glared at him as he slowly got to his feet. Mulder carefully kept a hand, then a foot on the bag as he languidly resumed his poised stance. Disgusted, the agent threw the ball back to the pitcher. Meanwhile the young Ambercrombie stood patiently at the plate waiting for his chance to shine.

Mulder grinned at the crowd and waved to Scully. He impudently held up three fingers and then waggled a fourth indicating he fully intended on reaching home base. 

"You better make that good or you get to do the damn paperwork," Scully yelled back. She knew Mulder couldn't hear her over the yelling crowd, but she wanted the threat on record.

"What was that about?" Haverscomb asked curiously.

"Oh, just reminding Mulder of the deal he made with Agent Cruger for his services to the team. Agent Cruger was moved to visit us in our basement domain. Quite frankly I was surprised that he even knew the way. Apparently he considered Mulder's talents in baseball were worth the trip." 

"You mean Agent Mulder negotiated a deal? Hmmm, maybe I ought to remember that next year," Haverscomb laughed evilly. "I didn't think Agent Cruger liked your partner very much."

"He doesn't, but he wants to win badly enough he'll make a deal with the devil himself." Scully smiled wickedly. "As well as I know Mulder, I never realized he was hiding his talent as a baseball player under the proverbial bushel. You might want to take lessons in negotiation from Mulder, Frank. It was an absolute joy to listen to him beat Agent Cruger into submission."

"OK, give. What's the price for Mulder making me look like a fool out there," Haverscomb said with a definite laugh to show her he didn't hold a grudge. One of Mulder's grounders had taken a wicked hop just as Haverscomb had been ready to pounce and it bounced past him into the outfield, allowing a man to score. Haverscomb had taken a fair amount of abuse from his teammates for that error. Haverscomb merely reminded them of the twelve balls he *had* caught and suggested they start helping him win the game by getting more hits.

"Lets see now, dinner for two at Samuel's Bar and Grill plus the use of the VC secretarial staff for days equal to the number of runs Mulder was responsible for." Scully sighed contentedly as she recalled Mulder's deal.

Sitting here in the July sun, Scully contentedly counted three days of no paperwork with another day just waiting to streak in from second base. Totally aside from her natural love of baseball and watching her partner display his athletic talents, Scully was reveling in the luxury of anticipating four days of telling a secretary to transform a pile of disorganized notes into a respectable expense account report.

Returning her attention to the game, she saw Mulder once again tormenting the basemen by dancing farther and farther off the bag. Again Taggert swung around to pick him off and only to see Mulder standing innocently on the bag. Scully saw the pitcher's mouth work and wondered what curses were being flung in her partner's direction. Grumbling, Taggert turned away and began his windup, intent on removing Mulder's threat by obliterating the hapless Ambercrombie.

Mulder coiled like a spring and then burst away from the base as soon as the ball left the pitcher's hand. Intent on only one thing, reaching third base and then stretching whatever luck happened to be riding on his shoulders to aim for home.

The crack of the bat connecting to the ball rang in Scully's ears. From the sound of it this was a double at least. Another run and another chance for Mulder to prove once and for all how fast he could run. Ambercrombie smote the ball like a young Hercules and sent it hurtling low and fast towards left field, until Mulder ran directly into its path.

Later, Scully would swear she heard the ball hit his head with a sound grotesquely reminiscent of a brick hitting a grapefruit. She was too far away, logically she could not have heard the sound as the ball slammed into the side of Mulder's head, but the awful squelching sound haunted her.

"MULDER!" 

Scully's scream trailed behind her as she clawed her way past the stunned spectators to where her partner, her friend, lay crumpled in the dirt. 

"I'm a doctor. Get out of the way! Please, I'm a doctor, let me through, damn it!"

She shoved aside men twice her size without a thought to reach him. Even as she slid to her knees beside him, a part of her knew, a part of her cracked and shattered to lie in the dust beside him. 

One hand was still outstretched as if reaching for the dusty white square lying just a foot away. His face was strangely peaceful, frozen in a mixture of exertion and concentration, his open eyes betraying a flash of surprise. He lay still, too still, in the swirling dust. The ball, clogged with matted dirt bound to the leather cover by a hideous red glue, lay a few feet away.

"Come on, Mulder. Don't do this to me."

Quickly her hands ran the checks. Her brain clinically noted the absence of breathing, the still pulse and above all the bloody concave dent in the side of his head, even while her heart screamed its silent protest.

"Breathe for me, Mulder," she whispered as she checked his airway and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. A desperate kiss willing him to live, to come back to her.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - breathe. 

Scully felt Mulder's body quiver with the sudden onset of CPR. Someone was applying the steady count and compressions on Mulder's chest, trying to persuade his heart to beat on its own. Her mind was too focused on breathing life back into Mulder to identify her assistant.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - breathe.

"Come on Mulder, breathe for me," Scully whispered into his still face. His empty startled eyes stared blankly at her, looking deep into a nothingness that terrified her.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - breathe. 

The count and the dual effort went on and on, neither participant willing to surrender Mulder to death's waiting arms.

"Breathe, damn it," she pleaded. Her tears streaked the dust that covered his face, mottling it with her grief. 

_This is a nightmare._

_I'm going to wake up and find this is all a very twisted dream._

_This cannot be happening, damn it._

Her thoughts raged with disbelief in between the breaths she poured into him. She gave him her breath until she had no more to give. Refusing to accept that he was not coming back to her, refusing to believe that he was gone where she could not follow.

With a shriek of sirens, the EMTs arrived and began their own grim examination. She paid them no mind. When had she ever trusted anyone but herself to bring him back? He would come for her, he had never let death take him from her before, this time would be no different. A medic replaced the agent at her side. Scully hissed at the miniscule break in the rhythm. Her entire mind and soul were focused on breathing life back into Mulder's lungs.

"Ma'am, we need you to move back now. We have him."

"I'm a doctor, damn it," Scully snapped as she suddenly lost the rhythm.

"Then you can best help now by letting us do our job and by giving us the precise details of his condition. How long have you been doing CPR? Has there been any response?" Cold clinical questions that tore at her heart.

The medics knelt by Mulder's body, quickly inserting a breathing tube and attaching EKG monitors to his chest with practiced ease. Her world narrowed down to Mulder and the efforts to bring him back, nothing else mattered, nothing else existed for her at this moment. Barred from assisting, she defied death to take him, challenging him for possession of the life that had come to mean so much to her.

"Agents Scully and Taggert have been applying CPR for approximately fifteen minutes," Skinner's clipped tone came from behind Scully. "Agent Mulder has been unresponsive since the accident."

"Breathe, Mulder. Come on. Breathe," Scully whispered, never taking her eyes off Mulder's face.

The senior EMT watched his team work fruitlessly to gain some response as he radioed the situation into the emergency room doctor. He listened for a moment, then nodded and with a curt gesture, ordered his team to begin prepping the stimulator. Too much time, no response to CPR, a steady flat line on the EKG monitor, he was not hopeful, but they had to at least try. They always tried.

Numbly Scully watched the EMTs prep Mulder's chest for the paddles. Following instructions from the ER doctor, the medics sent the electrical surges into his unresponsive body. Three times she watched Mulder's body arch and fall back to earth from the powerful jolts. The medics worked silently and smoothly, fighting death in a desperate rear-guard battle. The crowd of agents stood as silent witnesses to their determination.

After the third shock, the senior EMT spoke at length to the doctor, nodded sadly and gestured for his team to cease their efforts. When the medics sighed and sat back on their heels, ending the forceful coercion of the still heart, giving Mulder up to death, Scully fell to her knees beside him and began to apply the strenuous CPR rhythm by herself. 

"Don't do this to me, Mulder. Breathe, damn it. Breathe!" she pleaded breathlessly. Her own lungs and heart straining against the ruthless task of giving everything she had to Mulder.

"Ma'am . . . Doctor Scully, it's over. I'm afraid there is nothing more we can do. I'm sorry."

She ignored the looks of grim pity on the faces of the medics as they shook their heads in silent response to the questioning crowd. She shook off their hands as they tried to prise her away from her task; as they dared to interfere with her. He would come back, he was just being a bit more stubborn this time. All he needed was some encouragement, just a couple more breaths . . .. 

"Agent Scully." AD Walter Skinner bent down and, gently at first, then more firmly, pulled her away from her partner's body. The crowd around them stood silent, stunned by the sudden tragedy, shocked by the dark horror of death intruding on a dusty ballfield on a pleasant sunny July afternoon.

"Noooo," Scully pleaded as she fought the restraining arms of her boss.

"Agent Scully," Skinner snapped, commanding her attention, reminding her that she was an agent under his command.

Scully shuddered, stretched out a hand towards Mulder's body, then stood silent and still.

"Agent Scully, I'm sorry. There's nothing more you can do. Let them take him. You did all you could, all anyone could do." Walter Skinner looked into Scully's eyes and prayed to whatever god was listening to help her. Her eyes were burning with grief and a rage that had no one, nothing to focus on.

He saw one of the medics gently close Mulder's eyes, erasing the startled look that had stared back at them, as if Mulder wanted to know by what right death had come for him in such a mundane way. He had survived conspiracies, death by fire and by ice. He had even clawed his way out of the hell of a Russian gulag. This brilliant, erratic and Quixotic agent of his was destined for a hero's death, not clubbed down by a fucking baseball in a fucking Saturday afternoon game. At that moment, Walter Skinner began to doubt that God was even paying attention any more to what was going on in the world He created.

"I'm fine, sir. I . . . his mother . . .." Her voice tried to steady then shook apart as the sobs rose up in her throat and choked any further attempt at speech. Unwilling to break down for the amusement of the onlookers, she twisted free of Skinner's hands and stared into the sunlit western sky. 

The creak of the metal stretcher sent a shudder through the wreckage of her heart. Without looking, she knew the medics were preparing to carry Mulder away into her world of cold steel tables and questions answered by dissecting the dead. This time he hadn't come back for her, this time death had not given him up and for that she was not prepared to forgive God anytime soon.

_I'll come with you, partner. You won't be alone. Not yet, anyway._

She knelt beside him one last time, brushing aside the medics as she straightened his limbs and body until he merely looked as if he had chosen the dusty infield as a convenient place to take a nap. The medics waited patiently, no doubt used to this scene played out for them so often, willing to give a little of their time to allow for the grief of the ones left behind.

"Agent Scully, let them take him now. There's nothing more you can do here." Skinner raged at the inadequacy of his words. How do you tell the survivor in a partnership like the one these two shared to let strangers take the other half of your soul away to a cold dark place?

Silently Scully stood up and let the medics lift Mulder onto the stretcher. In the distance she heard the sound of a man retching his soul out onto the dust. Brushing aside Skinner's offer of help, she walked to the ambulance, rigid as a soldier on parade. Pain and grief rode on her shoulders as she marched as honor guard to her fallen comrade. Unconsciously Skinner straightened up, squaring his own shoulders until he stood at attention, joining her in her silent salute. Gradually the other agents were drawn up to attention as Mulder's body was carefully loaded into the ambulance. Without a backward glance, Scully climbed in with her partner and let them shut the door behind them. For the last time, she and Mulder would be together, alone against the world and none dared interfere. 

**********

Thursday, one week later

The funeral was just the latest in a series of tortures seemingly devised for the sole purpose of driving her mad. She sat through the simple service in a daze. For some reason she kept hearing Mulder's ironic comments on the glowing eulogies spoken by agents who had barely bothered to restrain their contempt for him when he was alive, but now found him noble and dedicated.

I'm going mad, she thought more than once as she heard his voice whisper in her ear. Twice only did the ironic sarcasm cease. Once when Skinner rose to speak in quiet reserved tones about passion and commitment to a cause greater than self. Scully felt the whispers change to awed confusion, even embarrassment. They changed again, afterwards, when she stood in unbending solitude enduring the nattering platitudes of the assembled agents. Ambercrombie shuffled up to her, barely able to raise his eyes to hers, his own pain branded in his dark eyes, trying somehow to find the words he needed to say for the sake of his own soul, if not for hers. The whispers were almost anguished in their effort to convey comfort that could not reach the comfortless.

"Agent Scully--I'm so sorry--I--" Words barely begun before they faded, his speech halting, Ambercrombie labored not to sink to his knees before this stoic woman and beg her forgiveness. 

Prompted by the whispers, Scully focused on the instrument of her solitude. Ambercrombie's despair matched her own. She felt the other agents flinch as he approached her, waiting for her wrath to destroy him. 

Scully flinched as the tone of the whispers changed to anger, not against the hapless Ambercrombie, but against the hypocrisy of the agents who praised the dead while cheerfully maligning the living.

"It's--it's OK, Agent Ambercrombie. Agent Mulder would not have blamed you." Scully hesitated, fighting to get the next words out and mean them. "I don't blame you." Stilted words, grudgingly given, but ultimately meant. She felt the whispers soften with an affectionate approval. I am definitely going mad, she thought with a certain satisfaction.

To her horror, Ambercrombie collapsed in tears at her feet. The other agents withdrew slightly, whispering among themselves. 

No doubt starting a betting pool on the exact number of days until his forced retirement, the bastards, she thought with a slight surge of anger, the first real emotion she remembered feeling since seeing Mulder crumple in the dust six days ago.

To her surprise, AD Skinner came up and helped Ambercrombie to his feet. She didn't hear what he said, but a look of surprise and gratitude flashed across Ambercrombie's face before he nodded and withdrew. A stern glare from the AD scattered the hovering agents.

"Agent Scully, that was a very kind thing to do. Agent Ambercrombie has been devastated by the accident. Like Agent Mulder, he seems to regard guilt as his personal domain."

"Sir, I . . . can we talk about this later? I just want to go home before I tell those bastards what I really think about them and their damned eulogies."

Skinner stood aside. Scully was not ready for comfort, except from the one source that could never be there again. He gave her the respect and honor he would give any soldier suffering the loss of a comrade. A military background might, in many ways, be stifling emotionally, but the military understood loss. Scully had retreated behind her barriers and he would not force her out until she was ready. Soon she would remember she was alive and resume living, but Mulder's death was still too raw, too much in the present. 

"Take all the time you need. When you feel ready to return to work, we can talk about what the future holds. You are a fine agent and I know of several openings which you could fill most competently." Skinner was adamant on this point. He would make the Bureau recognize her abilities as a field agent if he had to storm the director's office himself. She deserved respect and a chance to prove herself in the mainstream after so many years shunted off with Mulder and his quixotic quests.

"Thank you, sir."

Then she was gone, another soldier bent under the load of loss and the severance of a bond closer than life itself. Bent, not broken, he reminded himself. God help the conspiracy if she decides to carry on with Mulder's work. In place of a crusader, they will face an avenging angel, he whispered quietly to himself.

**********

Dana Scully gratefully shut the door of her apartment on the world outside and retreated into the dim coolness. Blinds drawn shut against the sun, her living room resembled a den of shadows. The sunlight hurt her eyes these days, eyes aching from unshed tears, hooded against the memories of a bright sunny afternoon when her world had shattered apart in the dust.

Now, here in her own place, Scully could relax into the grief she had held at bay for so long. Even with her mother, wracked with her own grief, she did not cry, did not break down. Watching them lower Mulder's casket into the dark earth cracked the shell she had built around her heart, but with a will as strong as steel, she held the crack together until she could reach her shadowed sanctuary.

"Oh, God, Mulder!" she cried as she sank to her knees on the carpet, bowed in half with grief. "Why?"

Clumsily she rose and stumbled towards the bedroom. Through the tears, she carefully removed the dark suit she had worn for the funeral. The brightly patterned scarf that resembled a tropical nightmare, so typically Mulder in its riot of garish colors, fell across her hands. Silently, sensually she stroked the silk, feeling his presence hovering beside her. The scarf had been a birthday gift from him last year. Pulling on jeans and Mulder's Knicks T-shirt, she wrapped the scarf around her neck, trying to hold on to this feeling of connection that lingered between them.

"It's dark in here. To hell with the sun being over the yardarm or not," Scully muttered as she dug out the bottle of Glenlivet she had been saving for a special occasion. She carried the bottle and a large glass into the living room. 

She knew the Gunmen had held their own version of a wake for Mulder. Byers showed up at her door this time, trying to express his own grief and that of his friends, inviting her to join them. She refused, knowing that if she once relaxed her armor of restraint she would never make it through the funeral. The Ice Queen lived, if only to keep what she and Mulder shared away from prying curious eyes.

Two glasses of blended Scotch whiskey later and the Ice Queen was only a distant memory. Scully allowed herself the luxury of collapsing in tears, fighting the frantic whispers of concern and comfort that droned in her mind. She wanted to feel the grief, she didn't want to be comforted by some insane illusion fostered by her memories. She didn't want to hear Mulder's voice whispering to her, pleading with her to let him in. Madness lay in listening to that voice, she feared. A madness that, however alluring, would ultimately betray her to loneliness and despair.

"Damn it, Mulder. Of all the cockeyed stupid ways to die . . .," she raged. Suddenly he felt near. She wanted to beat the hell out of him for doing this to her and then hold him in her arms until he agreed to come back to her.

"Well it certainly wasn't very pleasant on my end of it, Scully."

"What the hell?" Scully was shocked almost sober when Mulder's voice came out of the shadows beside her. This was no whisper echoing in the darkness of her mind, illuminating her descent into madness. This voice rang in her ears, filling the air with its familiar tone.

"You know, you are a very stubborn woman. Apparently it takes plying you with Scotch to loosen you up enough to realize you can hear me. Either you're going to have to open yourself up to extreme possibilities or you're going to go through the rest of your life slightly sloshed, Scully."

The ironic humor in this phantom voice clawed at her heart. So very Mulder, yet it only served to remind her of what she had lost.

"Sorry, Scully. I tried to do this more gently, but you just weren't listening."

"Who's there? Why are you doing this to me?" she screamed at the madness she felt closing in around her. "Just let me go mad in peace, damn it! Leave me the hell alone."

"Scully, it's me. I won't hurt you." Mulder kept his voice steady despite an urge to howl his grief and fury over his fate to the high heavens. Scully needed him calm and in control if she was ever to acknowledge his reappearance. 

"Just open your mind, just a little bit more, please." 

Mulder ached with the need to wrap his arms around her and rest his head on hers while assuring her that it was all right. Her grief tore at him, shredding his heart and soul. Beyond the shock of seeing how his death had shaken her, Mulder was dismayed by the realization that she might retreat behind her scientific rationality and refuse to believe in him. 

Shaking her head, Scully downed her third glass of Scotch in a single long gulp before gingerly pouring herself a fourth glass. There, in the shadows, was a familiar form, standing awkwardly beside her computer looking for all the world like Mulder. He was wearing the light gray baseball jersey and white jeans he had worn the day he died. The only difference was that these were clean, not begrimed with dust and sweat.

"I'm drunk. I'm drunk and I'm seeing things," she announced ponderously to this newest facet of her impending insanity. Still, if insanity brought Mulder back to her, perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing after all.

"You're drunk. That I can agree with, but you are not going insane. I'm really here, more or less."

The Mulder illusion grinned at her. Tentatively she smiled back while the rational corner of her mind wondered how many psychiatric sessions it was going to take to recover from this fantasy.

"Scully, I am here and yes, I am a ghost. Believe me it's not a career option I would have chosen."

"How?" Scully managed to croak as she stared blearily at this strange apparition standing in her living room.

"Do the words 'bureaucratic fuck-up' have any meaning for you?"

"Huh?"

"I wasn't supposed to die, Scully. Get banged up, spend a week in the hospital with a broken shoulder, but dying wasn't on the agenda. Somebody fouled up somewhere and to everyone's surprise out there, I showed up. By the time the mistake was caught, there wasn't much use in sending me back. Believe me, Scully, you really don't ever want to see what the inside of a brain looks like after it's been smushed into pate. Yuck."

"So why are you here, presuming that I really believe you are here of course," Scully said trying not to confuse herself with the slightly convoluted phrasing. This had to be the most heart-rending alcohol-induced illusion a demented universe could have inflicted on her.

"To put it simply, which is more than I can say for Gordon, the angel or caretaker or whatever that explained the situation to me, I wasn't finished here. Too many other agendas would get screwed up and the entire future time-line would require readjusting if I just disappeared so I was sent back." Mulder paused, his eyes filled with sorrow and a chilling loneliness. 

He was trying to keep this conversation light, to help Scully over the initial hump of skepticism. Talking with her like this however, was bringing back his own grief, his despair when he realized he had died and the painful sad realization that whatever the potentials of his relationship with Scully had been up to now, they were shattered beyond redemption. He was no incubus to take his pleasure with the living, but he now understood what could drive the dead to desperate communion with the living.

"Miss me?" he asked with a wry smile betrayed by the aching wistful tone of his voice. "You could say I got lonely out there without you and decided not to ditch you this time," he added still trying for a light touch but unable to conceal the bitter truth behind the words. He was lonely. Bitterly, utterly and devastatingly lonely floating in that gray nothingness without her.

"Mulder, damn it you can't be Mulder, but what the hell else do I call you?"

"Well, Mulder always worked. Why don't you just stick with that and we'll debate the philosophical intricacies of my existence later."

Scully carefully considered that statement, reluctant to agree yet unable to discern any traps. _Oh hell, it's just a fucking dream, why not?_

"Sure, fine, whatever."

"Not exactly the most ringing endorsement I've ever had, but it will do for now," Mulder quipped giving her a strange look that combined mischief and inconsolable sadness.

"OK, *Mulder*, what do you want from me?" Scully asked wearily. The alcohol was hitting her system. She felt the neurons of her brain sinking in an Scotch-drenched tidal wave. Suddenly it no longer seemed strange to be sitting in her living-room talking with the ghost of her dead partner. 

"Right now, just to believe I'm not an alcohol-induced hallucination," Mulder answered with a touch of amusement in his voice.

"But you are, you know - a nalcohol hallcination. Not that I mind. You're a very nice hallcination," Scully slurred seriously as she hastened to assure this apparition that she meant no offense. She upended the glass, downed the remaining Scotch in a single gasping swallow then reached for the bottle.

To her dismay, the half-empty bottle floated away from her hand and hovered in midair about five feet away. She blinked once and made a grab for the elusive bottle. Mulder faded back into sight shaking his head.

"Hey, come back here!"

"I don't think so, partner. You've had enough. Any more and you'll be spending the night on the couch." Mulder's shoulders moved as if he had sighed. "You're too heavy for me."

"Excuse me?" Scully began to feel that this conversation was rapidly going downhill. Bad enough she lost her partner to a fucking little white ball, now his ghost was insulting her.

"Scully, can we wait until you're sober before we discuss the physics of being a ghost? I don't even understand most of it. But I do know I can't lift you . . . I've tried," he added in a whisper of a voice, so low Scully wasn't even sure she heard it. For some reason, those two words carried a weight of grief and pain that matched her own.

"Mulder?" she asked, trying to focus on him and finding concentrating on anything difficult. "You keep fading in and out, like a bad TV connection."

"Great, now I'm a lousy TV set. OK, Scully that does it. You are going to have to be sober before we talk any more. Learning to be a ghost has me confused enough, I don't need your help getting more confused."

Mulder or, at least, the alcohol-induced image of him sounded exasperated to Scully's expert ears. She held a graduate degree in deciphering Mulder-emotions.

"You don't need my help?" She latched onto the few words that made any sense and felt like crying again. This dream definitely sucked. "Why can't I dream a nice Mulder?" she cried.

"Because you're still stuck with the original model. OK, now let's try to make it to the bedroom, shall we?" Mulder stretched out his hands and gestured to Scully to get up. Letting his fingertips barely touch her hands he started to walk backwards towards her bedroom. Scully shivered once when her hands first touched his, then got up, swayed uncertainly for a moment, and followed him. Trying to maneuver around a chair, she stumbled and fought for balance. Caught off guard, Mulder grabbed for her and to her horror his hands went right through her arms. 

"Noooo!"

Without another thought she bolted through him into her bedroom and locked the door. Trembling with shock she flung herself into bed and lay there shaking and crying.

Mulder stood outside her door, barely visible in the darkened apartment. Finally giving up the effort to remain visible, he faded into nothingness. This was living up to his worst fears. Scully veered between not believing in him at all or running from him in horror. Right now rattling chains and moaning in some dank basement seemed damned attractive compared to convincing Dr. Dana Scully that she was saddled with a ghost for God-only-knows-how-long. 

Listening to his partner's muffled sobs, Mulder wondered if Gordon had lied to him; maybe this was Hell, his own personal version of Hell. Eventually the sobs turned into sodden snores and Mulder allowed himself the luxury of drifting into her room. As he had done every night since he came back, he perched on the end of the bed and watched her sleep: a silent guardian of her dreams. 

Now, he dared to lightly brush the hair out of her eyes, letting his phantom fingers trail their feather-touches along her face. She moaned as if she felt his presence and began to twist into his touch. Startled, afraid of disturbing her sleep, Mulder withdrew his hand. Scully moaned again, blindly seeking the comfort of his touch.

"Sleep, Scully. I'll be here if you need me." Mulder whispered softly. He began to hum a low soothing lullaby he remembered his mother crooning to him in his cradle. Gradually Scully settled down into a dreamless sleep clutching the silk scarf tightly in her fist.

**********

Exhausted by grief and numbed by the Scotch, Scully slept through the remainder of the afternoon and far into the night before she awoke, blindly stumbled into the bathroom and then collapsed back into bed without ever really waking up. Mulder watched her silently and made no effort to make his presence known. She needed the sleep, even a drugged sleep was better than the fitful snatches of rest she had taken the past week. Hell, he had slept better on his worst nights when he was alive than she had this past week.

When the rising sun began to pour through the windows, Mulder carefully pulled the curtains closed before the light should wake her. He rationalized this protective urge by reminding himself that he needed the practice in manipulating physical objects. The sheer pleasure he derived from watching Scully sleep couldn't possibly be the reason he shielded her against any interruption, he assured himself. For just a little while longer he could pretend he was alive, could imagine future possibilities and dream of pleasures now irretrievably stolen from him with his life.

He vividly recalled the previous night when he almost let her fall because he couldn't concentrate fast enough to make his arms solid. The memory burned and he spent the next hour or so moving small to medium objects around. It was easier to move things when he didn't take the energy to materialize, but the practice was still tiring. I'll probably have to work up to chains, he thought wryly.

As he practiced moving objects around, he gradually learned he could lift and move heavier objects when invisible, but had greater dexterity and eye-hand coordination when he could see himself in relation to the object. He also discovered he could change what he was wearing from the comfortable uniform to his familiar dress suits to his favorite Speedo, but this feat required expending more energy than he felt was worthwhile.

Out of consideration for Scully's sensibilities, he usually materialized looking solid, but unless he concentrated and spent a little energy he lacked any substance to manipulate physical objects. It took a tremendous amount of energy to fully materialize, becoming as solid as he looked. He wasn't sure where the energy he was using came from but he quickly discovered he did not have an unlimited supply on tap. Use too much and he flickered out like a dead light bulb until he recovered. If he wasn't concentrating while materialized he found he reverted to a quasi-transparent shadow - a traditional ghostly apparition.

He froze when a china figurine of a sailor skidded across the dresser top, his gentle push turning out to be stronger than he intended. The fragile piece went hurtling off the edge towards the wooden floor. Horrified, Mulder made a frantic dive through the dresser, throwing all his concentration into becoming solid enough to catch it before it smashed into a thousand pieces. In his panic, he also materialized. There he was, his head and arms poking through the dresser with his feet stuck out the other side. For a moment he panicked, feeling the pressure of each individual atom of the wood and clothes and assorted whatnots that occupied the physical space he had intruded upon.

_Please, Scully, this is not the time to wake up. If there is a God in my fucked-up universe right now, please let her stay asleep._

Very, very carefully he let the tiny figurine settle down on the floor. Limp with relief Mulder let himself fade from view as he extricated himself from the dresser. It took him a good ten minutes before he felt strong enough to attempt to pick up the tiny statue. Finally, with great care, he picked up the figurine and gently replaced it on the dresser. 

After that near disaster, Mulder avoided small breakable objects and simply explored the apartment and the surrounding area, popping back in to check on Scully about every five minutes. He discovered that dogs could sense his presence even when he was completely invisible. As he recuperated from the shock of this discovery he wondered who had been the most surprised, the dog to encounter something supernatural in its backyard or him when the dog began howling hysterically. Old habits were hard to break and Mulder sprinted back into the safety of Scully's bedroom. He could still hear the dog howling its protest and alarm accompanied by the shouts of its bewildered and irritated owner.

As she slowly emerged from the dense fog of sleep, Scully tried to remember why she had gone to bed fully clothed. Her mouth felt cottony and tasted faintly of Scotch. Vague memories swam up from the fog, memories of consuming a vast amount of Scotch along with a heartachingly vivid memory of seeing Mulder's ghost. This memory woke her up completely, her eyes already brimming with more tears. She swatted wearily at them and stumbled towards the bathroom. 

Cold water seemed to help, but she felt the tears lurking just behind her eyes, waiting for another chance to drown her self-control. Returning to her bedroom a few minutes later, still toweling her face dry she looked up to see a semi-transparent Mulder sitting cross-legged on the end of her bed.

"Morning Scully," the apparition said warily, giving her one of Mulder's half-smiles: part cheerful, part apprehensive.

"My God! You weren't a dream," Scully moaned.

"Sorry, but I'm real," Mulder answered calmly, concentrating slightly to solidify his appearance. So far this seems to be going well, he thought optimistically. It has to go well.

As long as she could see him, she remained willing to admit he existed. If she decided he was merely an illusion, he could do a strip-tease in front of her and she would never know he was there.

"Or I'm still dreaming," Scully supplied hopefully.

"Nope. You're awake. I'm a ghost. I think that pretty well covers the essential points of the situation," Mulder countered with a slight smile.

"Or I've gone insane," Scully shot back, feeling her back up against the wall in this strange debate.

"Now you're grasping at straws. You are one of the sanest people I know - er - knew - whatever," Mulder said with growing frustration.

Scully shook her head and fled the room. "Coffee. I need coffee."

Mulder was waiting for her in the kitchen, seated on the countertop, legs dangling, grinning mischievously.

"Scully, I can chase you all over this place, but eventually we're going to talk, so get the coffee started and join me in the living-room." With that, he disappeared. From the other room she heard the sound of the TV running through the channels.

Scully took her time measuring the coffee and starting the percolator. This could not be happening to her. Ghosts did not exist. Wrapping this comforting thought around her shaken scientific world view, she went into the living-room. Whatever comfort she had gleaned from her denial fled when she saw the TV remote hovering in mid-air.

"Mulder!"

The remote fell to the floor with a dull clatter. A moment later a shaken Mulder began to fade into view.

"Oops. Sorry, Scully," he apologized as he finished materializing.

"All right, *Mulder*, we'll talk, but you're going to answer some questions first," Scully snapped. Her irritation with the situation was, by now, completely overshadowing any residual fear.

"Fair enough." Mulder was content to let her take charge of the conversation. This was going to be hard enough for her, she might as well exert control where she could. Seeing that she preferred to remain standing, arms folded in her classic interrogator's stance, Mulder sat down on the arm of the couch about three feet in front of her. Concentrating just enough to be sure he remained visible, he turned the rest of his attention to Scully.

"OK, you claim to be Mulder's ghost . . .," she began. Mulder cocked an eyebrow and allowed himself to go semi-transparent.

"Stop that!" Scully's temper was fraying as the fear she had banished swelled, choking her.

"I'm sorry, Scully," Mulder apologized with voice and eyes. "Please don't be afraid of me," he pleaded softly. "I won't ever hurt you."

Mulder wished he could explain to Scully that being a ghost was at one and the same time intensely horrifying, confusing, frustrating and immensely fun. For the sake of his sanity, and hers, he was trying to concentrate on the fun aspect. If he even allowed a smidgen of his horror to leak out, Scully would summon an exorcist and he really didn't want to find out what an exorcism could do to him. Some truths are better left unknown in his opinion.

"I'm not afraid," she lied. "You just startled me." To her surprise, she felt the fear fade in the face of the apparition's obvious distress. Whoever or whatever this was had Mulder's mannerisms down pat. Unwillingly she felt a dawning conviction that, however impossible, this was Mulder.

"You had questions?" Mulder asked in an even tone, trying to ease the tension between them.

"How and why seem pretty good places to start." Stern, no-nonsense Agent Scully was back.

"'How' is rather complicated. I remember an instant of dull pain when the ball hit, then the bottom dropped out from under me. I fell for what seemed like forever. One hell of a roller coaster ride I have to admit," Mulder added with a grin. At Scully's glare he sobered up and continued.

"This time I didn't end up in the star-field. It looked like the inside of a cloud, all soft and gray and empty." Mulder paused as the coffee-maker buzzed. "Go on Scully, get some coffee. I won't go anywhere," he promised.

A few moments later Scully returned cradling a steaming mug of coffee in her hands. Mulder's expression turned wistful as the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee filled the air. With a shrug of his shoulders he resumed his tale.

"I don't know how long I just floated around inside that cloud, but eventually Gordon showed up. He didn't give me a chance to ask the thousand and one questions I had. He told me there had been a mistake and I was going back. I was in too much shock, first dying then being told it was a mistake then being told I was coming back as a ghost, to ask for details. Plus, Gordon was really vague on the how's or how-to's of being a ghost. I am beginning to think it's sort of an on-the-job-training situation." Another Mulder grin.

"Anyway, next thing I know, I'm standing in the morgue watching some strange man peel open my head," Mulder looked almost greenish at the memory and his form quivered slightly around the edges. He remembered the horror he felt when he saw his body, the exact moment when he realized he was really and truly dead. Trapped by a macabre fascination he had stared at the damage the ball had done to his head until the pathologist began to drill through the skull. Unthinking flight for the safety of his apartment had remarkably landed him in that sanctuary which was thankfully still cluttered with his things and empty of anyone who might have seen his panicked arrival.

Scully hoped she didn't look as guilty as she felt. The autopsy had been her idea, in fact she had insisted on it, all evidence to the contrary. She had to be certain that the obvious cause of death wasn't masking a more insidious one.

"Believe me, I didn't stick around. I fled and by accident discovered that just by thinking of a place, I could be there. I jumped around a bit, fascinated by this trick. There are limitations, I have to know the place in order to be there. No jumping off to Paris. Anyway, I spent a while just randomly jumping around: my apartment, the office, here." Mulder suddenly looked sheepish, turning a strange smoky transparent shade. Thunderclouds formed in Scully's light blue eyes.

"Honest Scully, I didn't mean to peek. I was so lonely by this time I just wanted to see you. How was I to know you parade around in your all-together?"

"That was you?" The thunderclouds were now joined by fire and brimstone in her voice.

"Yeah, well, I think so, unless you have another ghost you're not telling me about." Mulder quipped trying to calm the storm brewing in Scully's eyes.

"Damn! I thought my air conditioner had gone crazy. You bastard."

"I said I was sorry. Scully this is just as confusing and scary to me as it must be for you. I popped in just in front of you. I was so embarrassed I couldn't move out of the way. You walked right through me. Hell, you got the shivers for a moment; I damn near had hysterics," Mulder confessed. He remembered the awful wrenching feeling as her body passed through his. The feel of her inside him, two bodies attempting to occupy the same space as he fought to maintain cohesion. Afterwards he felt shredded, as if pieces of him were scattered to the four winds. Still, there was a lingering sense of Scully left within him that faded far too quickly.

"Why?" Scully was curious. What did a ghost have to fear?

"I think you not seeing me then walking through me finally convinced me I was dead. That and how much grief you held clutched inside. I wanted to cry, to hold you and comfort you, but I couldn't," he said in an bereft tone.

"Mulder . . .." Scully felt a stab of pity. Mulder looked so sad, so inconsolable that her own grief began to fade.

"It's OK. I vowed then and there to start learning how to be a ghost. Gordon said I had unfinished business. So, unless I could communicate with someone, I didn't see how I was going to accomplish anything. It was a choice between you and Skinner. Can't you just see me trying to haunt Skinner?" Mulder looked almost scared at the prospect.

Scully chuckled despite her intent to remain sternly aloof, an impartial inquisitor.

"My point exactly," Mulder chuckled, sounding so normal that Scully felt the tears threaten her composure.

"Scully, you were . . . are . . . my partner, my friend. Who else could I turn to?"

"So, what you're telling me is that you are a permanent fixture in my life: my own personal ghost?" Anger, sadness mixed with incredulity flowed through Scully's question.

Mulder shrugged and nodded. This was the crux of the matter. If she refused to help he might as well consider taking up residence in the FBI's basement. He watched Scully wrestle with the problem of reconciling the incontrovertible evidence of a ghost sitting in front of her with the scientific refutation of the validity of supernatural phenomena.

"And if I say no?" Scully's tone was even, giving him no hint as to her intentions.

Mulder tried to keep his voice equally as even, not to betray the tremors of near panic her question aroused in him.

"Nothing bad. I'll drift around doing ghostly things until Gordon says I can leave. I won't bother you unless you call for me. I'll manage, Scully. You saying no won't condemn me to Hell or anything permanent like that." Mulder tried to smile reassuringly at her, but suspected she could sense his fear even now. 

Scully carefully considered the problem as she wandered around the room. Absorbed in keeping his fears at bay and praying that Scully would take the leap of faith for him, Mulder let himself fade into a hazy transparent shadow. He wasn't aware of how absorbed Scully was in her own thoughts or how transparent he was until she accidentally started to walk through his outstretched legs. He abruptly vanished from his spot on the couch and reappeared a moment later sitting atop her computer table well out of range of her absent-minded ambling. 

Finally Scully sighed, while shaking her head and glaring at him, through him, with an unreadable expression on her face. Mulder tensed, trying to contain the tight pressure of fear that was threatening to send him howling from the room. He didn't want to be a lonely ghost haunting his basement office, trying not to go mad without Scully in his life. Gordon had been adamant. Mulder wasn't going to be allowed back until his scheduled death, sometime in the far future from Gordon's tone of voice.

"If, and the operative word is 'if', I accept that you are Mulder's ghost, what is this arrangement going to involve? I mean, what do you expect me to do?"

Mulder tensed even more as he dropped the final bomb. He should have known Scully would want to know what the fine print said before agreeing to anything.

"I want you to take-over the X-Files," he said slowly, begging her with his eyes to agree, to continue what they had begun.

"Mulder, I don't have your passionate belief in the paranormal - I can't take your place. I believe in science, not the paranormal." Scully flung her hands up and began to stalk around the room, muttering to herself. Mulder flinched at the language she was using, though he knew she didn't mean for him to hear her. Sometime in the future, if they had a future, he really needed to point out that he could now hear a cat walk on cotton. 

"Scully, you are standing in your living-room talking to a ghost. I'd say you've already begun to believe." A typical Mulder grin, part child, part leering male, with a dash of professor lit up his face. "You don't need to believe in everything, Scully. Just believe in the truth."

This time it was Mulder who flowed down from the tabletop and began walking around the room, too intent on what he was trying to say to notice that he was walking through the furniture. Scully's eyes grew wild and she paled, but she held her ground.

"The cases we handled were ones no one else believed in or ones no one else wanted. Tooms, Pfaster, all the others would have just gone on killing if we hadn't believed enough to stop them. We may not always have agreed about the solution, but we did solve most of them," Mulder spoke with the familiar passion of his beliefs.

"Presuming I agree," Scully tried to ignore the brilliant flash of hope in Mulder's eyes. "One, I'm not even sure Skinner will give me the X-Files. Your death does provide the government with the perfect excuse to shut them down, permanently. Two, if Skinner can keep them open and is willing to give them to me, he isn't going to allow me to handle cases without a partner. How do I know whether I can trust anyone willing to work on the X-Files with me? Remember Krycek? And don't even suggest I tell him I have a ghost as my partner," Scully added in a stern I'm-not-in-the-mood-for-a-joke tone to forestall the mischievous look dawning in Mulder's eyes. 

"Two ways actually. First, I will be around and will be keeping a very close eye on anyone assigned to you. Trust me, Scully, I may not pack as much of a wallop as I used to, but I have ways of making someone's life extremely miserable, if not downright dangerous. I'll watch your back," Mulder promised.

"Second, I think I know who Skinner has in mind. He's young, he's green and, on the surface, he would appear to be the most unsuitable candidate in the entire FBI, but I think he would storm Hell to protect you." Mulder ended on a pensive note, his gaze fixed on some distant point far beyond Scully's comprehension.

"Are you going to enlighten me as to the identity of this potential partner?" Scully asked with rising impatience. Being a ghost certainly hadn't changed Mulder's propensity for oblique explanations.

"I think you've had enough shocks for one day, Scully. Let's quit while we're ahead." Mulder paused in mid-grin. "Are you game for this, Scully? Will you help me?"

"God help you if I live to regret this decision, Mulder, but yes, I'm game." Scully tried to maintain a stern expression but the sight of Mulder's boyish grin blew her self-control and she grinned back at him. For an instant Mulder looked like he was going to hug her, then let his arms drop with a resigned sigh.

"We can't . . .?" She looked perplexed. She treasured each time she remembered being held in his arms. They were the memories that kept her from falling into despair the past week.

"I didn't want to presume," Mulder replied sadly. "I can hold you, it's just that . . . well I think the idea still slightly scares you. Let's just ease up to that point, shall we?"

"OK, Mulder, but if you are going to haunt me, we are going to have to come to terms with each other."

"Fair enough, but right now I think it would probably be a good idea for you to call your mom. She's worried sick about you. Take her out to dinner or something. I'll make myself scarce. I'll be back later." Mulder made shooing gestures with his hands before giving her a big smile and fading away.

"Mulder, only you could end up as an X-File because some damn angelic clerk got his paperwork screwed up," Scully said as she went to the phone. Dinner with mom sounded awfully good suddenly. It was tempting to tell her mother about Mulder, but she wasn't sure her mother would believe her right now. Maybe later, when she had proven that she wasn't going mad with grief. Right now she felt better than she had felt all week. For the first time since the accident, she felt purpose return to her life. If this was insanity, she could very easily get used to it.

**********

Saturday morning

Scully woke up slowly, stretching like a cat as she remembered the long chat with her mother capped off by dinner at their favorite restaurant. It was nice to just sit and talk and remember Mulder without fearing that each memory would bring a torrent of tears. Her mother looked so relieved when she had actually brought up Mulder's name that Scully wondered how she had ever believed she could hide her grief from her. Mulder had been right, damn him, her mother had been worried sick and spending the afternoon and evening with her had been the perfect solution.

Remembering Mulder reminded Scully that she was slightly pissed off at him. He had promised to return, but he had not been in evidence when she returned home. Of course, quickly following on the heels of that thought, was the rebellious thought that maybe the whole thing had been a demented dream. Glancing at the clock, Scully was startled to see it was almost noon.

"Damn it, I thought I set the alarm for 8 a.m."

"Sorry Scully, you looked like you could use the sleep," said a voice coming out of thin air just about at the end of her bed.

"Yeek!" Startled, Scully tried to sit up while covering her bare chest with the sheet and ended up tangling herself in the sheet until she resembled a thrashing mummy.

"Geez, Scully. You have got to stop doing that." Mulder's voice was shaking and he materialized with a definite wobble in his form. After a moment however he settled down into solidity. His expression looked faintly harried.

"Sorry Mulder. I'm not used to waking up to hear a man's voice coming from my bed. Besides, I was almost convinced you were a dream. Where were you last night?"

"Didn't we have this conversation yesterday?" Mulder asked plaintively. "Are we going to have to go through this every time I show up?" Mulder was beginning to sound a bit testy.

"Just let me get used to you popping in out of nowhere. It's not as if I've ever had to cope with that before," Scully snapped back. She sighed and glared at him.

Mulder looked puzzled for a moment then caught her meaning. He grinned wickedly as he began to slowly fade out.

"All the way out of the room, Mulder. I mean it."

"OK, Scully but you sure take all the fun out of this ghost business," Mulder pouted just as he disappeared completely. He made a point of opening the door and then closing it again as he left the room.

Scully stared suspiciously at the door for several more minutes. How could she actually know if Mulder was gone or not? Knowing Mulder he could slip back in anytime and she'd never know it. After a moment or two she untangled herself from the sheet and made a dash for the bathroom. 

Half an hour later she emerged from her room dressed in a neat pants suit looking as he remembered her on so many cases. Ghosts can't cry, but Mulder had to fight for control of his own ectoplasm in order to materialize. He made the mental note to remember that strong emotions do not mix with materialization. So much was the same, yet he felt the great gaping chasm of the differences between them now.

"Mulder . . . oh there you are," Scully said brightly, considerably relieved to see him visible. "We need to talk about what I'm going to tell Skinner. I want to call him today and set up a meeting. If I am going to help you, I don't want to give the Smoking Man any chance to shut us down."

"Just tell him you feel ready to come back to work and that you want to keep the X-Files open. I think you can skip over why and just let him assume what he likes." Mulder resumed his perch on her computer table, apparently deciding that this gave Scully free room to move without running through him. "I'll go with you. I kind of miss Skinner reaming my butt. I miss a lot of things I never thought I would," Mulder said with a small sad smile that spoke of deeper longings than a lesson in verbal abuse from Skinner.

"I know, Mulder. I miss them too," Scully admitted. She shied away from putting into words her grief for the extreme possibilities her dreams had ceased exploring when Mulder died.

"Well, reminiscing over old times isn't getting the X-Files open or me back in the good graces of the celestial bookkeepers. Hang on a minute, I'll be right back," Mulder said as he quickly faded from view.

"Hey, wait . . . where are you going?" Scully yelled. "Damn the man, even as a ghost he is the most irritating . . .." She headed to the kitchen to make some coffee and toast a bagel, muttering all the while about Mulder's propensity for running off without warning. Wandering back into the living-room with the coffee she ran headlong into and through Mulder as he rematerialized.

"Yikes!" 

Mulder made a visible effort to control his urge to retreat back into nothingness and held his form steady. He was actually beginning to get used to the squeak Scully gave whenever he suddenly materialized, but the awful sick feeling of her walking through him still threatened to send him into hysteria.

"Scully . . .." he complained plaintively.

"Sorry. Mulder can't you give a warning or something," Scully said with just a touch of irritation lingering in her voice.

"Nope. This model doesn't come with an early warning signal." Mulder grinned to let Scully know he was OK. "How about I just whistle before I materialize? You'll be the only one who can hear it."

"Sure, fine. Just give me some warning. Wait a minute, why can't anyone else hear you? For that matter, can anyone else see you?" Scully was curious. Having an invisible partner could be a very nice advantage in investigations, but God help her if she ever had to testify about how she got the information. _Yes, your honor, my invisible dead partner found the relevant evidence'. Right, sure, next stop St. Elizabeth's Home for the Mentally Disturbed._

"So far you're the only person who can hear me. I haven't tried moaning or groaning in dark hallways yet, but give me time, maybe it will come to me." Mulder grinned then turned serious. "I think it's because I only want you to hear me. Same thing for seeing me. I know it took me long enough to get you to see me. Still, I'm not going to take any chances. Whenever anyone else is around, I'm going to stay safely invisible. I know for a fact that I can direct my voice for your ears only, otherwise there would have been mass panic at my funeral. Very nice one by the way - amazing how many of my fellow agents like me better dead," Mulder ended with a sarcastic bite.

"Then that was you? You realize of course you damn near had me convinced I was going insane?" Scully glared at him. Mulder shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands in mock surrender. 

"The phone Scully. Skinner's in his office, I just checked." He picked up her cell-phone and handed it to her. His fingers were almost transparent against the dark leather of the casing.

Scully paled and bit her lip. This was going to take some major readjustment in her thinking. Right now however, she just wanted to take things one step at a time. Getting control of the X-Files without going into details with Skinner was all she felt like facing today.

Mulder played with the TV remote while Scully arranged to meet Skinner after lunch. She hoped any tremor in her voice would be put down to residual grief. She made a mental note to speak to Mulder about staying either solid or going completely invisible; this transparent wraith sitting in her living-room cheering enthusiastically at a basketball game was totally unacceptable.

**********

To Scully's surprise, returning to the FBI building felt like coming home. She had expected sharp bitter memories of loss to claw at her self-control, but instead felt a warm comforting sense of being where she belonged. Feeling the slight chill of Mulder's hand resting on the small of her back no doubt helped, but Scully realized that this was perhaps the one place where her loss was completely understood and respected. 

The few agents she encountered nodded and gave her looks of support and sympathy but did not speak. What could be said that could lessen the grief of the one left behind? She passed through this gauntlet of silent respect feeling the bonds of brotherhood close in around her, supporting her, acknowledging her grief and offering their own in the loss of one of their own, however prodigal.

"Maybe I should have died a long time ago if this is what it took for them to realize you're one of them," Mulder whispered with only a trace of his usual sarcasm.

"Agent Scully, come in," Skinner responded as he opened the door to her knock. He waved her to her usual seat before sitting down behind his desk. Scully balked as she saw the two chairs in front of the desk, facing memories of so many meetings with Mulder at her side, trying to explain the unexplainable, listening to Skinner butt heads with Mulder's wild theories or, at times, wilder behavior.

"I'm still here, Scully." The voice at her side was soft with its own memories. Realizing she was not alone, Scully recovered and resumed her steady stride until she was sitting in her familiar place. A brief smile flitted across her face as she wondered how Skinner would react if he realized that his impossible pair of agents were still together.

"I wasn't expecting you back so soon. You are entitled to more leave time, Agent Scully. No one will think less of you if you take the time to mourn." Skinner's voice was gruffer than usual. His eyes held their own pain and loss, measured only by the stern demands of duty and the pressures of command.

"Thank you, sir, but I think I would prefer to be working. I need to work," Scully hesitated. There was more truth in her words than she had meant. She did need to work. Even without Mulder's ghost hovering beside her, she realized that returning to their work would be a validation of his life as well as hers.

Despite Mulder's re-appearance, her grief was still raw. He was part of her life again, but things could never be the same between them. She was alone. Ghost or not, her partner was dead and she had to carve out a new life without him. At least without his physical presence standing beside her against the world. She had to make a new life, her own life. His ghost was both a comfort and a constant reminder of what they had squandered in the time allotted to them

Skinner studied her in silence for several minutes, weighing the lingering signs of grief, measuring them against the sense of purpose and determination he saw in her eyes and in the way she walked. The woman bowed under an intolerable weight of grief he had seen at the funeral was gone. Agent Dana Scully was back. God help us all, he silently prayed. There was steel in those eyes and he felt a simmering apprehension that she was not going to retreat back to the safety of Quantico or allow him to assign her to the relative safety of a field agent's position. She was going to demand to return to the dangerous war with the shadows which had haunted her's and Agent Mulder's lives. He prayed she would not force his hand to place her in the line of fire.

"Agent Scully, I have the highest respect for your work with the X-Files," Skinner began.

"You damn well better," Mulder muttered. Scully flinched when she heard him, quickly covering it up by shifting position. _Damn Mulder, shut up before I blow us out of the water._

"You have more than earned either of the two positions I would like you to consider. The Director of the Forensic Science Labs at Quantico has requested you to fill the position of Assistant Director of Forensic Pathology. This would mean a two-step jump in grade with commensurate salary increase."

"Oh shit," Mulder swore viciously at this unexpected flank attack on his carefully crafted plans. "Scully you're too good a field agent to disappear back into Quantico. Besides," Mulder added with a distinct note of desperate humor, "You'd hate a nine-to-five job with regular leave time and no mutating lifeforms to liven up your day." 

This was not looking good. Skinner was upping the ante way beyond anything Mulder had anticipated. Scully was being offered recognition in her own field with a clear run at the directorship of the pathology section if she wanted it. Mulder was almost afraid to hear what the other option was. _Sure as hell not the X-Files from the looks of it._

"Sir," Scully began hesitantly. She was more than a little stunned by the offer. Assistant Director, in-line to be Director of the Forensic Pathology Labs was an open acknowledgment of her professional skills. She couldn't help but be honored and more than a little flustered. Dazzled by the offer, she motioned Mulder to quit whispering in her ear a half second before she realized he wasn't really there, at least as far as Skinner was concerned.

"Are you all right, Agent Scully?" Skinner asked, looking a bit puzzled. Scully froze, frantically hunting for an answer to explain her gesture.

"Mosquitoes, Scully," hissed Mulder.

"Just a mosquito, sir. You were saying." Scully flushed slightly, hoping Skinner would not pick up on her reaction to white lies. Whopping big lies she could tell with a straight face, little white lies tripped her up every time.

Skinner stared at her for a moment then looked back down at the papers on his desk. Scully allowed herself a brief sigh of relief. Sorting out the voices was beginning to give her a headache. She wanted to tell Mulder to shut up but really didn't want to convince Skinner she needed a visit to the staff psychologist. She had access to her very own personal psychologist; the fact that he was a ghost should not be cause for concern or discrimination.

"I also like you to consider a position as a field agent, specifically as ASAC of the Nashville office. I know it would require relocating, but a change of scenery might be good in this case. The director of the Nashville office is quite eager to have you. I went to the Academy with Gerald Jyrcouski. He is a fine man and a fair one. He is also one of the few senior agents who respected Agent Mulder's abilities, both as a profiler and as a field agent. Your work with Agent Mulder would be considered a bonus rather than a hindrance."

"Damn you Jyrcouski, don't do this to me. I could use a little less praise from you right now," Mulder growled. "Scully, you'd hate Nashville. No good barbecue closer than 200 miles," Mulder argued as he leaned over to her.

"Shush," Scully hissed as softly as she could manage.

Apparently not soft enough because Skinner's glare pinned her to her chair. Scully immediately began coughing and pointing at the water pitcher on Skinner's desk. With a very puzzled look on his face, Skinner poured her a glass of water and handed it to her. He started violently as his hand passed through Mulder's arm resting on the edge of the desk. Mulder gave a slight yelp and quickly retreated back to his chair. Scully's fake cough turned into a real one as she choked on the water she was drinking.

"Agent Scully, are you sure you're feeling well enough to return? These positions are being held for you with the understanding that you may take as much leave as you need before giving me an answer," Skinner assured her.

"I'm fine, sir. I think I must have swallowed that mosquito." Scully felt her cheeks turn red and cursed her inability to lie about the small things in life. _Better get this interview over before Mulder gets me committed._

"Sir, I am deeply honored and flattered by the offers from Nashville as well as from Quantico." Scully sensed a wave of fear and dread oozing from the specter beside her. Mulder wasn't making a sound, but she could feel his presence. 

She couldn't help but be attracted to the offers. Promotions, both of them, one within her scientific field of expertise, the other recognizing her work as a field agent. The Nashville offer tempted her the most. That Jyrcouski had respected Mulder would eliminate the one problem she had with moving into the mainstream of field duty - coping with the derision most agents had for Mulder. Suddenly what had seemed such a simple task now was tearing her in three different directions. Ultimately though, it was loyalty and, perhaps, a perverse desire to show the Bureau that the X-Files were a viable division in and of themselves, something beyond Mulder's obsessions, that showed her the way.

"Sir, I thank you for both of those options. However, I would like to keep the X-Files open. I realize that I may not believe in the same way as Agent Mulder did, but the X-Files served a vital and necessary function in handling cases no one else could. I believe our solve rate more than justifies keeping the division open and functioning."

"Score one for Agent Scully," Mulder cheered softly at her side. Scully barely restrained an urge to tell him to shut up. As it was she must have hissed a warning because Skinner was looking at her with a very odd concerned expression.

"I'm fine sir. I have grieved, I will continue to grieve for Agent Mulder, but I believe I can best serve his memory and the interests of justice by continuing what we began." Scully kept her voice firm and controlled. There must be no doubt in Skinner's mind that this is what she wanted and that she was more than capable enough to handle.

"Agent Scully, I have no doubt, should I decide to give you the X-Files division, that you will handle it with the same high standard of professional conduct evidenced in your work up to this point. I am just concerned that grief for your partner may be blinding you to the other career options open to you at this point."

Hoping that Skinner was not going to refuse her request out of a misguided effort to protect her, Mulder shifted nervously in his chair. It shifted slightly, making a small creak. Feeling the chair move, Mulder froze. He heard Scully swallow nervously as Skinner's attention shifted away from her. Skinner glared at the chair, obviously puzzled. Mulder felt like a deer caught in the headlights of an advancing truck. Think invisible. Just think invisible, he repeated over and over in his head like a mantra.

Skinner shook his head and returned his attention to Scully. Her barely audible sigh of relief did not escape him but he could discern no reason for it. Filing it away for future pondering, he returned to the matter at hand.

"Sorry, Scully. I didn't think I was concentrating enough to move anything," Mulder apologized when Skinner's attention was diverted. To forestall future accidents, Mulder got up and began pacing around the room. That should be safe enough and still be close enough to provide moral support for Scully should she need it. "Fat chance. She can handle Skinner ten times better than I ever could, even on my best days," he muttered to himself.

"Agent Scully, you realize that if I do give you the X-Files, I will also have to assign you a new partner." Skinner paused to let her consider his words. He saw her glance briefly at the chair on her right, then bring her eyes rigidly back to his. 

There was something odd about her, something he couldn't quite put his finger on that smacked of deep waters and secrets. Probably nothing more than a reflex memory of four years of carrying on a conversation with Mulder that spoke volumes in a single glance. As well as he knew them both, he had never deciphered that silent language of theirs.

A small niggling of guilt began to worm itself into Mulder's relieved enthusiasm. Scully was turning down two excellent promotions to help him. By what right did he have to continue to blight her professional life? Absorbed in untangling guilt from his overwhelming need, he negligently walked right through the edge of Skinner's desk where the reports were stacked. He shoved the guilt aside, _I'll deal with that later,_ and froze in place as he became one with the air, not even leaving the faintest shimmer of cohesion to his presence. 

Skinner's attention was diverted by the soft rustling of the papers on his desk. A slight cold breeze swept past him and he shivered involuntarily. "I am going to have to talk to maintenance about the air conditioning," he muttered softly.

"Yes sir, but I presume I would have some say in who is chosen." Scully hastened to interrupt Skinner's obvious but bewildered reaction to Mulder's presence. She intended to stand firm on this point. No matter what assurances Mulder gave her about watching her back, she needed a partner *she* could trust. "I think we both remember what happened the last time a partner was assigned to the X-Files," she added with deadly calm, deliberately drawing Skinner's complete attention back to her.

Skinner shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Would he never be allowed to forget Krycek? Assigning that particular rogue agent was a command handed down from above and Skinner had gone along, too blind to the conspiracies swirling around Mulder to realize he was being used. 

"You have my assurances, Agent Scully, that you will have a chance to review any choice I make. I have someone in mind, but I would like to review his qualifications and interview him specifically with the X-Files in mind before I pass his name on to you." Skinner looked pensive for a moment, his eyes sad as he stared at the empty space beside her. Then, returning to his usual brusqueness, he straightened up and let his expression resume its normal stern reserve.

"Meanwhile, you have the X-Files. I will recommend that you receive the appropriate promotion and increase in grade and salary, but until the paperwork is approved, you will be acting head. If you change your mind, I will hold these positions open until you are officially approved as division head of the X-Files," Skinner emphasized his willingness to accommodate a change of heart. Mulder winced as he saw the hesitation in Scully's eyes. He suspected she would have preferred to burn her bridges, not have them open and inviting behind her.

"Until your partner is approved and in place, I would ask you to confine yourself to office duties. Good luck, Agent Scully. I will be here if you need anything," Skinner assured her, letting his eyes express the deeper meaning behind the perfunctory phrase. She was entering the lions' den and he felt the weight of worry settle uncomfortably on his shoulders. 

"Yes! Thank the nice man Scully," Mulder said a bit giddily. He was torn between relief, enthusiasm and uncertainty that this was the right thing for Scully. Attempting to re-connect with her physically, as in the old days, he squeezed her shoulder in congratulation and pride. His cold touch sent a shiver up her spine and Mulder drew back his hand as if he had been burned. 

"Uhmm . . . We . . . I . . . thank you for letting me continue with the work Agent Mulder and I started. I'm sure if he were here, he'd thank you too," Scully finished confidently, shivering slightly. She smiled warmly at Skinner, recovering from the slip of the tongue. 

Her eyes flashed with fire for a moment as she bit back an acid comment to Mulder. It wasn't his fault she was having a hard time sorting out the voices. He sounded so alive, so real that it was too easy to forget no one else could hear him or see him walking beside her. This arrangement began to look a little more complicated than it had yesterday. Still, she had the X-Files safely within her grasp, along with a promotion as a nice added bonus. Skinner must be feeling guilty, she mused as she got up and shook his hand.

"I know it will be difficult adjusting to a new partner. Agent Mulder, for all his eccentricities, was a fine agent. You two shared a once-in-a-lifetime partnership. I was proud to have known him. I will do my best to insure that your new partner measures up. Good luck, Agent Scully." Skinner took her hand and straightened up in the FBI equivalent of a military salute.

Scully merely nodded, anxious to get Mulder out of the room. He was making small embarrassed noises and she didn't trust him to not do something outrageous to relieve the somber atmosphere. As she headed for the door, the chill touch of his fingers on the small of her back sent a shiver up her spine yet she felt oddly comforted by the familiar presence at her back. Skinner could never know her partner was still there, making his presence known as he guarded her back.

********

"Well, Scully, you got that desk you wanted," Mulder joked as he materialized inside their office. It's not the same. It will never be the same, he thought ruefully.

"Next time, just requisition one from Supply," Scully retorted with an edgy snap.

"Oh, is that how you do it?" Mulder quipped, trying to gage her mood. His own was a volcanic mixture of accomplishment and a shaky relief from the cold fear that Scully would leave him behind to pursue her own career goals and a guilty recognition that she was throwing away those goals for him. Right now he wasn't sure whether he wanted to cry (providing of course that he could still cry) or shout for joy. Being dead was a definite drag on emotional displays.

Scully wandered around the office, picking up files, slides, odds and ends randomly then putting them back down. The magnitude of what she had just done threatened to overwhelm her. This was her office, her division, her responsibility - a chance to shine or fail ignominiously. She felt a propriety flush of pleasure as she surveyed her new territory, then just as suddenly it flickered out and died when her restless gaze fell on Mulder standing by the file cabinets. Actually in the file cabinets, but her mind still veered away from making that precise a notation of his tendency to stand in objects.

Mulder watched the emotions play across her face. By the narrowing of her eyes, he knew immediately they had just hit one of the many rocky patches in this uncertain, complex new relationship of theirs. He had been so focused on the task of convincing Scully he was real and then convincing her to help him that he glossed over the myriad problems lying in wait for them. So much for resting on his laurels.

"Mulder?" Scully began, hesitant to express her reservations yet keenly aware that this issue needed to be addressed now.

"I know . . . or at least I guess I know." Mulder started to pace, caught the frazzled look in Scully's eyes and looked down to see he was midway through his desk. "Sorry."

Concentrating on avoiding the furniture, Mulder made his way over to the chair in the corner and perched on the back of the chair, letting his feet rest on the files cluttering up the seat. His desk and chair he left for her; stating in action what he hoped she understood - this was now *her* office.

"Scully, I can't promise I won't attempt to interfere, that I won't argue with your methods or conclusions - just as I've always done." Mulder gave her a shy smile that changed in an instant to a self-mocking grin. 

"This isn't going to be easy for either of us. All I can promise is to try." Mulder's expression turned on a dime and became somber. "You can always tell me to go away, Scully, and I will, at least I'll shut up and go invisible."

"Why do I have the feeling I'm going to be working with both you and Skinner looking over my shoulder," Scully said beginning to feel boxed in and astonished to find she resented the feeling. 

The lure of the two promotions, the chance to prove herself out from under anyone's shadow, was tempting. Even if she directed the X-Files for years, she would still be regarded as carrying on Mulder's legacy. The offer from Quantico, especially the offer from Nashville, would give her the chance to make her own name in the Bureau. Not as Mrs. Spooky, the heir to Spooky's kingdom, but as Dr. Dana Scully or Agent Dana Scully. She felt her resolve, her snap agreement to help Mulder, waver. Perhaps, after all, her scientific mind said in a soft reasonable voice, he is just a grief-spawned illusion. You would be destroying your future, your dreams, for the sake of an illusion that will pass as your grief does, leaving you with nothing but a basement office and sad pity from your fellow agents.

"Scully don't ever feel you have to justify a single decision to me. I may get pissed. Hell, I may get fucking furious, but you're the one calling the shots."

"And if I do something you don't agree with . . .."

"Then, knowing me, I'll get angry and storm around a bit, but ultimately what can I do? We've argued before and, God knows, we will probably argue again, but this time *you're* in control. *You* decide where we're going on a case. All I can do is argue and try to scrounge up enough evidence to change your mind." 

Mulder pleaded his case trying to keep the desperation from his voice. If Scully balked now, then it was back to Plan B, haunting his basement office. Of course if that got too lonely, there was always Skinner. //Wonder if Skinner has an opening for a ghost in his office?// Mulder wondered, trying to cheer himself up with levity that felt as flat as it sounded. The fear was coming back, threefold as he fought his past mistakes in her eyes and these unexpected doubts from the strong, self-reliant Scully he had always known.

Scully remained unconvinced. Her body language screamed her lack of conviction that he wouldn't try to resume control of his X-Files. Mulder tried to banish his fear, but knowing his past failures weighed heavily against him in this argument made it hard to believe.

Scully, please, don't back out now. I need you, he prayed to whoever might be listening. 

He wanted to walk over and hold her, to let her know he was there for her in whatever way, shape or form she needed. The limitations of his ectoplasmic form had never seemed so rigid. He could hold her, providing she wanted to be held by an iceberg. Wave after wave of nostalgia for the simple act of hugging another human being crashed into him. Desperately he tried to hold his form and his concentration under the assault of his memories of the few times he had allowed himself to hold her, to pull her against his chest, drawing comfort as he gave it.

"What do you want me to say, Scully? These are your files now, each and every one of them down to the one on Samantha." Grief for a sister he would never be able to hold in his arms again made his voice quiver.

Suddenly Mulder was fighting for control of a wild mix of anger, fear and grief. His form flickered in and out, then steadied into a fuzzy transparent image. Scully stood silent, arms folded, her expression unreadable.

Mulder fought a smoldering rage at Scully's mistrust, at the fucked-up fate which landed him in this predicament and ultimately at his own helplessness. The volcano exploded as a week of pent-up grief at all that he had lost in a single fucked-up accident blew his self-control apart in a shattering cataclysm of anger.

"Enough of the doubting-Scully bullshit! If you can't trust yourself to take charge or me to let you, then tell me to leave and be done with it. You have *your* desk, a promotion and you don't have to be Mrs. Spooky anymore. Seems to me like you made out pretty good on this deal."

Mulder flowed off the chair and stormed around the room unaware of the dramatic rise in static electricity generated by his outburst. Scully's hair stood on end as she found herself in the middle of an electrical storm.

"I'm a fucking ghost, Scully! I can move things around a little, walk through walls and generally make a pest of myself, but I can't *do* anything." Mulder stopped and turned to face her, an aurora of electrical discharges haloing him.

"You're worried because I might bitch a little about how you do things? Damn it, don't you have any more confidence in yourself than that? Where is the confidant Agent Scully I was damn proud to be partnered with? Where is the Agent Scully Skinner thinks enough of to offer two damn good positions along with promotions, not to mention allowing her to take over the X-Files with the confidence that she can handle the kind of shit we ran into?" Mulder moved in until his face was about six inches from Scully's. The static charges swarmed around her like a hundred angry stinging bees. Still, she did not flinch, mesmerized by Mulder's fury she stood motionless while his anger flailed at her body and soul.

"You seem intent on giving up before you even hit the field. I'm just a convenient excuse, aren't I? A reason you can give yourself for the failure you seem so damn sure is waiting for you. FUCK YOU!"

Drowning in his own fury and fear, caught in the eye of the storm his violent outburst had summoned, Mulder spun on his heels and stormed through the wall into the storeroom next door.

For several long minutes, Scully stood trembling from the combined shock of his words and the mini-electrical storm that raged in their - no, her office. Gradually the static charges died down and the air in the office returned to normal, but still Mulder did not return.

*********

"Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn!" Mulder kept his form just solid enough to punctuate his curses with his head beating against the wall. Apparently death had not cured him of flagrant stupidity where Dana Scully was concerned. She probably hated his guts by now and he wouldn't blame her a bit.

"Maybe haunting Skinner's office won't be so bad. Nice view. Plenty of room to drift around. Yeah, right," he muttered disconsolately. "She expresses a perfectly natural reservation about my ability to keep my big interfering ass out of her affairs and what do I do? I prove exactly what she was afraid of." Mulder leaned against the wall and let his form dissolve into nothingness.

"Damn. Damn. Damn," echoed softly in the darkness.

*********

"Mulder?" Scully repeated the soft query she had made seven times in the last fifteen minutes. Mulder's silence was beginning to worry her. Either he remained so angry that he was unable to face her or else he had plunged into a morass of self-recrimination.

"Damn you, Mulder. You gave me a kick in the ass when I needed one. Don't you dare run off and hide. Please . . .." 

Scully sternly refused to break down. The weakness she had shown earlier when faced with the monumental task she had assumed would not be repeated. It wasn't Mulder's fault that he saw the doubts she usually kept buried deep behind her mask of cool confidence. She understood his fury, his fear, better than he realized. He had not lied to her about how much this new partnership meant to him, but neither had he been exactly truthful. She had tasted his fear and sensed the horror existence without purpose held for him. He would be more alone than he had ever been in his lifetime. 

In a way, this episode merely proved how intertwined they were. His fear inflamed hers. Her doubts cut deep into the trust he placed in her to save him. Still, they were stronger together than they were apart. She needed him, now more than ever. Losing him once nearly broke her. Losing him twice because their fears drove them apart would be like losing the other half of her soul. It took him coming back to her for her to realize how much he meant to her.

"Please Mulder, come back," she whispered to the empty air.

"I'm here, Scully," a welcome voice spoke out of the darkness behind the file cabinets. "I wasn't sure you were still speaking to me." Sadness that spoke to her of the guilt he wore like a second skin. "I'm sorry."

"Mulder, if you run off every time the argument just gets interesting, I'm never going to have a chance to prove you wrong," Scully quipped, forcing a note of light banter into her voice. Mulder was Mulder and it would have been wrong for death to have changed him.

"Yeah, well I wasn't hearing much from your side. Guess I thought I'd dazzled you speechless," Mulder reached for the same bantering tone and felt some small satisfaction when he caught it. Neither one of them was really up to exchanging light repartee, but he understood that this was Scully's oblique way of trying to smooth over the breech.

"Not a chance, Mulder." Scully sighed and let the light tone drop. "We need to talk about this, but not now. Right now I want to go home, put my feet up and enjoy a nice hot bubble-bath and a glass of wine."

Mulder grinned at the image then wiped the grin off his face as Scully gave him a good-natured glare. He tried, rather unsuccessfully, to look innocent.

"Come on, Mulder. Let's go home," Scully said as she wearily got out of the chair. Sitting in his chair had felt like having Mulder's arms around her. The strangeness of sitting at his desk, knowing it was now hers, following the explosion of emotions between them left her feeling exhausted.

"Lead the way, Scully," he whispered as he faded from view. Only the faint chill touch of his fingers on the small of her back reminded her that he was there.

*********

Four hours later, after a long hot bubble-bath accompanied by a large glass of wine, Scully felt relaxed enough to think about what had to be said to Mulder. Part of her was still angry that he could say such things to her, but part of her accepted the fact that when Fox Mulder got afraid, he lashed out viciously at the source of his fear. That she could cope with, but in his fear he also usually managed to cut her to the quick with accusations that bore more than a little truth. Her anger was as much for the truth behind the words as it was for the words themselves.

Mulder had been silent on the ride home. He remained visible, but his expression was unreadable, even to her expert eyes. After escorting her to her door, he had vanished, promising to return when she called him. That was Mulder, a kaleidoscope of gentleman, little boy and obstinate SOB, Scully reflected with a touch of asperity.

Now they needed to talk about what was said and left unsaid this afternoon while the harsh memory of the wounds they inflicted were fresh. Before either of them could retreat behind their carefully crafted emotional barriers.

"Mulder, are you there?"

Scully felt more than a little silly talking to thin air, but these days there was a chance that thin air contained Mulder. While she waited, she poured herself another glass of wine and braced herself for Mulder's appearance. It was still a shock to see him materialize.

A long five minutes later, she felt a cold touch on her shoulder and a sense that she was no longer alone. A soft whistle preceded Mulder's appearance by mere seconds.

"Hey Scully." Mulder materialized perched on her computer table, what she was beginning to regard as his place.

"Hey yourself," she responded giving him a once-over. "You OK?"

"I'll do."

"Where have you been?" Scully knew she was delaying the inevitable, but they needed to repair the bridge between them. Nothing, not his fury or her doubts could ever destroy the connection they shared, but they needed to reconfirm in words what words had torn asunder. Mulder gave her a hesitant smile, but the lingering worry in his eyes showed he was also aware of the gaps he had torn in the bridge between them.

"Here and there. Paid a visit to the guys. Drove them crazy for a while. When I left Langly was tearing apart his computer muttering about viruses and government bugs." Mulder's grin slipped into a sad smile. "I miss them, Scully." A shrug of his shoulders expressed his resigned acceptance of that loss. The longing look he gave her implied that he missed more than the company of the Gunmen. 

"Then I went somewhere quiet and did some thinking about what you should be able to expect from me and whether I can meet those expectations."

The abrupt shift to the core of the problem startled her. One minute she had been chuckling over the thought of Mulder playing ghost with the Gunmen and now they were in the middle of the difficulties between them. She had expected to have to prod him into tackling the thorny issue. The Mulder she remembered had been rather good at avoiding discussions of his emotional response to problems. Mulder shrugged and spread his hands as he acknowledged her surprise.

"Scully, I don't know if I *can* change, but if change is possible for a ghost, I'll try."

"Mulder . . .."

"No, Scully, let me finish," Mulder said as he slid down from his perch and came over to kneel before her so his eyes were level with hers. Scully felt she could drown in the dark haunted depths of those eyes until her very sense of self was lost. Mulder turned away briefly. When he brought his eyes back to hers, they were merely a pair of hazel eyes staring into hers.

"I have no excuse for what I said this afternoon, except blind fear. I've never seen you doubt yourself like that and it scared the shit out of me. I guess I realized what an SOB I must have been, and probably will be again, to prompt such doubts about my willingness to let you run things. I was torn between knowing I should disappear and leave you to get on with your life and the absolute terror that you were going to tell me to go. I just lost it. I'm sorry." Mulder sat back on his heels and waited, like a prisoner at the dock, for Scully's judgment.

Scully contemplated this much subdued Mulder who sat so silent and apprehensive before her. This was a side of him she rarely saw. All the life had drained out of him. Scully couldn't help smiling just a bit at the imagery, but even as a ghost Mulder had retained an aura of driven purpose fueled by a frenetic energy. It hurt deep inside her soul to see him so subdued. Her anger melted before the pain of seeing him bare his soul to her, confessing his emotional sins.

"You try leaving me holding the X-Files, buster and I'll track your sorry ectoplasmic ass down and bring you back in a bottle if I have to." Scully glared menacingly at her partner who squirmed uncomfortably. "Running away is *not* an option, Mulder."

"Well it's not as if I have a hell of a lot of places to run to, but thank you, Scully," he said softly as he eyes came alive again with a twinkle.

"This is new to me too, Mulder. What you said to me hurt, very much, yet maybe I needed a good kick in the ass. I have doubts, Mulder. It's just I never felt I could let you see them. Too afraid you'd think I couldn't keep up with you. Now I guess I'm just a bit confused about you. On the one hand my mind tells me you're dead and probably just an insane illusion, but my heart and soul tell me you are here with me again. It may be awhile before I can straighten out this confusion. You might get treated to quite a few Scully-doubts. Are you up to handling that?" Now it was her turn to look apprehensive.

"I think so. Maybe the next time won't be so much of a shock. Being a ghost opens a whole new set of problems and I haven't even come to terms with most of the problems left over from my life. Where's a shrink when you need one?" Mulder said with a broad grin. "A psychologist for ghosts, now there's a happy thought." He sobered up and carefully took her hands in his, concentrating to make them solid. He saw her shiver slightly from the chill of his touch and wished there was a way to banish that particular side effect of his new existence.

"If you're still willing to put up with me, I will try not to be quite so much of an SOB."

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Mulder," Scully said with an arched eyebrow and knowing smile. Then she turned serious as she grasped the nebulous hands holding hers. "Let's just try to cope with each day as it comes. As long as we both realize we're in this partnership for the long haul, I think we'll be OK," she reassured him as well as herself.

Mulder squeezed her hands then laid them gently in her lap before standing up. He was shaking with the emotional currents swirling around them both. Much had been said, much remained to be said, but now he could face the future with a belief that somehow, against all odds, he would face it with Scully at his side. 

"Get some sleep, Scully. Tomorrow's Sunday. Kick back and relax. See your mother, read a book, whatever. I'll go pester the guys, maybe drop in on my mom - discretely of course," he hastened to add seeing the alarm in Scully's eyes. "I'll come back tomorrow night. Skinner will probably give you a few days to get acclimated before he springs a partner on you."

"Maybe he hopes I'll come to my senses. I got the distinct impression he wasn't overjoyed by my decision," Scully said with a wry smile.

"Probably not. I think he wants to keep what little hair he has left. The X-Files won't be dull, for either of you," Mulder answered with a smile.

"Meantime, I'll be available to answer questions, help move furniture or just be there to listen - whatever you like." Mulder resumed his perch beside the computer and gave her a boyish smile. "I'll even leave you alone to get things organized, but considering your opinion of my filing system, I might be handy to keep around."

Scully got up and stretched into a big yawn. The last few days had been an emotional roller-coaster and her mind craved sleep as it tried to re-adjust years of conventional assumptions about the universe.

"Are you staying here tonight?" She was growing accustomed to his silent presence watching her as she slept. She felt safe knowing he was there in the darkness. Better than a teddy bear, but not as cuddly, she reflected sadly.

"If my being here doesn't bother you. I don't sleep anymore yet I find it oddly comforting to watch someone who sleeps as well as you do," Mulder confessed as he turned a smoky transparent. Scully was beginning to recognize this as a ghostly equivalent of blushing. She sighed as she shook her head. Mulder was being Mulder. Even death apparently couldn't cure him of the voyeur part of his nature.

"It's kind of nice to know someone's standing watch; a little like when I was a kid and my father would come into my room late at night and just sit and watch me sleep," she reminisced.

"Just consider me your night-light, Scully. I'm there if you need me," Mulder said with a half-bow and a wicked grin. The rift with Scully still haunted him, but it felt good to be at ease with her again.

"Then I'll say goodnight now. Enjoy your Sunday, Mulder. Don't drive the Gunmen to distraction or I'll have Frohike on my doorstep asking for sanctuary. I'll see you tomorrow night. Monday will be soon enough to tackle the X-Files and it's assorted problems," Scully said as she headed towards her bedroom.

"Goodnight Scully. Sleep well. I promise, no Frohike on your doorstep." Mulder promised with a mischievous smile. 

He settled lightly on the end of the bed and waited until Scully was asleep before fading into the darkness. At least death offered this much improvement over his life, he got to indulge in unlimited Scully-watching. On the whole, however, he really would prefer to be alive. Alive offered intriguing possibilities for the future, dead rather limited his options. Mulder passed the night listening to Scully sleep while making plans for gently harassing the Gunmen tomorrow. Being a ghost did have its advantages where mischief was concerned. He could keep himself busy and out of Scully's hair until Monday.. 

*********

Sunday evening  
Dana Scully's Apartment

 

Rather than take his advice to relax, she drove to the Great Falls State Park and hiked for hours beside the rushing water of the upper Potomac River. Pushing her body to the limit, she exorcised the demons of her disbelief in sweat. The heat was keeping more sensible people off the trails. 

Perched atop a rockfall, high above the rapids Scully let her mind ramble over the situation she found herself in with Mulder or, more properly, his ghost. Ghosts did not, could not exist, testified her mind, but the evidence of her eyes and heart told   
her otherwise. 

_Trust Mulder to defy the laws of science and reason and, in doing so, give me a Class A-One headache._

"Mulder why is it whenever you are involved, I'm left between a rock and a hard place? Why is it that I always have to give up a part of myself for you? My heart or my mind - what kind of Hobson's choice is that?" The waters of the Potomac gave no answers to her questions, the rocks did not cry out the secret that would tell her which path to follow.

Resigned to her indecision, Scully gave up the effort to compromise between science and faith and started back down the trail. Mulder was an enigma. The best choice she could make was to try to take this new relationship one hour at a time, if Mulder's ghost was anything like Mulder in life.

By the time she reached her apartment it was growing dark. She was tired and sweaty. As she slipped into her apartment she was praying for a chance to take a long cool shower before Mulder showed up. 

"Hey, partner," Mulder said softly from the darkness.

Shit! Scully leaned her head against the door momentarily as she locked it behind her. She really wanted that cool shower, not a conversation with a manifestation that contradicted all she believed in.

"Don't worry, Scully. I just wanted to let you know I'm here if you need me. I'll let you get cleaned up." Mulder smiled teasingly. "I'll even promise to stay out of the bathroom. However, if you need your back scrubbed . . .."

"Not a chance, Mulder." Scully hesitated then ventured a come-hither smile. "But if I do, you'll be the first to know."

The dumbfounded look on Mulder's face told her she had scored a hit. As she closed her bedroom door, Scully's smile was replaced by a sad, pensive expression. So much had changed between them. She wondered if the fact that Mulder was dead allowed her to indulge in the secret urge to give back as good as she got in innuendoes. She could trade sexual innuendoes now because there was no chance of Mulder ever calling her on it. 

"Damn, I never wanted safe. I just wanted time to sort out the consequences," she complained to the silent darkness.

Scully stood under the cool cascade of water for nearly an hour washing away the heat of the day as her stubborn mind returned to the problem of coping with a ghost in her life. If only the problem could be sluiced away along with the dirt and grime of the day's exertions. Letting the water beat down on her head, she realized how ungrateful she must seem to Heaven. First she grieved for the loss of Mulder in her life and now, when beyond all reason and expectation he returns, she lamented the complications he brought with him. Life with Mulder, whether dead or alive, seemed destined never to be simple, she reflected ruefully.

As she slathered the soap over her body, she wondered what Mulder would do if she actually called his bluff and asked him in to wash her back? It might actually be soothing to have her back scrubbed, to feel the slow sensuous strokes of the bath mitt against her skin. The notion was tempting, a deep purring sensual sort of temptation buried deep within her for too long, but this balance between them was too precarious to hazard on a playful impulse. Scully sighed and finished her shower alone. Maybe later . . ..

Mulder was sprawled on the couch, actually on top of the couch for a change she was relieved to see, when she came out dressed in an oversize T-shirt and sandals. He looked so natural it hurt. Only the faint transparency of his form jarred her into remembering that he was dead. He looked up and smiled at her. Biting her lip to control the sudden urge to cry, she gave him a wavering smile in return. She would be in control, she would not give in to the confused mix of emotions she had about having him back in her life.

"Scully," Mulder sighed as he got up and walked over to stand in front of her. So many issues still remained unsettled between them. This was his atonement perhaps for leaving so much unsaid and unresolved during his lifetime, to have to deal with the tangled emotions he felt for his partner now when resolution and completion was beyond his grasp.

Scully looked up at him, defying her emotions to break free of the tight control she was exerting over them. She felt his ice-cold touch as his hand cupped the side of her head. Deep haunted hazel eyes peeled away her defenses, stripping away the walls she erected around her heart. She shivered at his touch, but leaned into his hand when he tried to pull back.

"It's not easy for me either, Scully. We never talked much, did we?" Mulder asked softly, his voice trembling with the effort to control his own stampeding emotions. "Would it help if I only showed up when you call?" he offered gallantly, if reluctantly.

"Running from the problem won't help, Mulder. We ran from dealing with our feelings when you were . . .," she hesitated as she fought to say the word, ". . . alive." Scully turned her face slightly allowing his hand to cup her face. "Sooner or later we are going to have to confront a lot of issues we managed to avoid," she whispered into his hand.

Fighting tremors of cold and fear, she wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned into his chest, praying that she wouldn't fall right through him. He felt solid enough, but cold. No heart beat reassuringly under her ear as she laid her head against his chest, no breath stirred the hair on her head. She breathed in the lingering scent of his spicy after-shave and soap and Mulder, marveling that even as a ghost he retained his own distinctive scent. Despite the chill that stung her soul, she held onto him as if he was her only anchor in a wild and stormy sea.

Mulder started, shuddering with the effort to remain cohesive and not abandon her to flee into the ether. The volcanic tangle of his feelings for Dana Katherine Scully simmered just under the surface. Feeling her warm living body against his chest threatened to shatter his resolve to shelter her from his confused emotions. Unconsciously, drawn by a need that burned his soul, his arms tightened around her and he laid his head atop hers, content to hold her like this for eternity.

They stood outside time, holding each other until her tremors reminded him just how cold his embrace was. Tenderly he pushed her away with a final brushing caress along her cheek. She resisted for a moment then allowed him to separate them, grudgingly consenting to the end of their silent communion of spirit and body.

"I won't run, Scully. If you are willing to put up with me, I guess I owe you some honesty in return," Mulder said with a resigned sigh. 

He hoped his self-control was up to these little discussions. In fact, he was rather surprised to discover that he could still react to her as a man. He plaintively wished that someone had taken the time to write a manual on being a ghost. He was dead, damn it, he sternly reminded himself. In his present state however, thought was action. His mind was responding to her touch, to her scent, to the feel of her in his arms and his body was obliging by becoming solid in a most embarrassing way. 

Desperate to hide his reaction from Scully, Mulder focused on keeping his arms and chest solid while allowing other portions of his anatomy to lose cohesiveness. This was not the time or place to discover just how fully functional he was. Moving furniture was one thing, dancing the horizontal tango was something else entirely. He was operating blind. Maybe a physical relationship would do no harm to either of them, but the possibilities if he was wrong were terrible to contemplate. Scully deserved a living partner who could share her life, not chained to a memory of a dead past.

"There's no hurry on this. Just don't feel you have to avoid touching me," Scully said firmly as she fought to control the cold shivers that set her teeth to chattering. The feel of Mulder's arms around her had been both comforting and terrifying. Their removal had been like sailing out of a safe harbor into wild waters. She vowed to challenge her fear and Mulder's to feel them around her again.

"Better than an air conditioner, eh Scully?" Mulder quipped, dispelling the emotion-heavy atmosphere. To his delight, his grin provoked an answering one from Scully. Heaven could easily be summed up for him in one of her rare grins.

"You could come in handy during the next blackout, I suppose," Scully said thoughtfully trying not to laugh at Mulder's expression. Chagrin at being one-upped, delight in the return of the relaxed give-and-take between them, and just a hint of sadness all chased each other across his face in the split second before he grinned at her.

Mulder raised his arms in mock surrender and retreated to the couch where he watched Scully putter around for awhile. She munched grapes and stray vegetables while straightening up the apartment and doing laundry until she finally settled in her favorite chair with her journal and a glass of wine. Mulder caught the shy, uneasy look she gave him as she opened up the book and her nervous fidgeting with the pen. Ghost or not, he was an intrusion or, at the very least, a distraction.

"I can take a hint Scully. Don't be shy about telling me to scram. You won't hurt my feelings. I'll be back after you've gone to bed." Mulder smiled reassuringly at her as he began to fade away. "Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day," he added in a serious tone.

"Good night Mulder and thank you," Scully whispered to the fading shadow of his body. He seemed so alive that she actually felt embarrassed by ignoring him when he was visible. For all she knew he might still be in the room, silently watching her, but as long as she couldn't see him, she could put him out of mind. She trusted him not to invade her privacy, though she wouldn't put it past him to periodically check on her. Still, if he said he was going, she had to believe him. There was no way to check up on him, at least any way she considered scientifically reliable.

_Will I ever get used to this?_ she wondered idly as she began to jot down her scrambled thoughts about this entire situation. Writing usually helped her organize her thoughts, to make sense out of nonsense. 

It was late by the time she went to bed. The sense of someone watching over her lulled her to sleep as the faint shadowy outline of Mulder's body sat on the end of her bed. Her last conscious thought was that it was so nice to feel totally safe in the darkness again. She thought she could hear Mulder's whispered 'good night Scully' as she slipped into the warm welcoming world of dreams where all things were still possible.

*********

Early Monday afternoon  
X-Files Office - FBI Building

 

Dana Scully sat at her desk grimacing at the backlog of e-mail clamoring for her attention. She was sitting down for the first time today after spending the morning cleaning out the desk. After Mulder helped her shift boxes and stack them out of the way, she began organizing his eclectic collection of books and clippings. Mulder was now busy organizing and filing his slide collection. Scully was trying not to be distracted by the sight of slides floating through the air. 

Mulder had considerately remained visible while they worked to clear the comfortable clutter he had accumulated over the years. However, by the time they were finished, he was almost transparent with exhaustion. A raised eyebrow from him was answered by a quick nod and he gratefully faded out of sight before turning his attention to the slides.

To her relieved surprise, Mulder had let her take the lead in rearranging the office to suit herself. She began making small changes, reluctant to distress him, but when he made no objection and readily shifted things to the places she indicated, she grew bolder until the office was arranged to her taste. Whatever qualms or regrets he may have had remained locked behind the inscrutable expression he kept firmly in place. Only his sad eyes betrayed his distress. Scully knew how difficult this was for him and appreciated the effort he was making to prove his willingness to let her lead.

"Scully, are you really sure I can't use my computer?" Mulder's voice interrupted her mental meandering. She glanced over to the small table covered with slide boxes. Mulder was still invisible and two slides hung side by side suspended in mid-air.

"Mulder, they probably deactivated your network account last Monday. I'm going to have to arrange to have access to your network files sometime this week," Scully answered patiently. Mulder was not even making an effort to hide his frustration at being denied access to his own files. This was the sixth time this morning he had asked the same question and received much the same answer.

"Well then some of these slides are going to have to wait until I can cross-check them against the list I have on file." The two slides settled back onto the table.

"I'm going to grab a quick lunch while I can. Will you be all right here?" Scully asked warily.

"Yeah, I'll be a good ghost, scout's honor." Mulder materialized holding three fingers up in the Scout salute.

"I'd feel more confident in that promise if I didn't know for a fact that you were never a Boy Scout," Scully replied, fixing him with a stern glare.

Mulder laughed. "Checking up on me?"

"Know thy enemy . . . and thy partner are always words to live by, Mulder," she retorted as she left the office. She mentally counted to twenty then threw open the door.

"Oh, and leave my computer alone, Mulder," she ordered as she popped her head back inside, catching him just as he was sitting down in front of her computer. She had the satisfaction of seeing him give a guilty start.

"You're a slave-driver, Scully," Mulder sighed in frustration but nodded his agreement to her terms.

Mulder watched her leave, listening carefully for her retreating footsteps down the hall to the elevator. Once he heard the elevator doors close behind her, he faded into thin air. 

This office, his basement refuge for so many years, was already beginning to feel like Scully. The new arrangement opened it up, gave it a feeling of space and organization his old office had lacked in spades. Throughout the reorganizing spree, he had maintained rigid control over the mixture of sadness and resentment he felt as Scully rearranged his domain to suit her purpose. They were useless emotions right now and Scully deserved better than to be subjected to his selfish resentment of inevitable change.

**********

For nearly an hour Mulder worked off his frustration by bouncing around paying flying visits to the Gunmen, pausing long enough to leave them a cryptic message on Frohike's computer then to his favorite bench on the Mall where he watched the living pass by on their endless errands. 

"Mulder?" 

Mulder felt Scully's voice vibrate within him. Flowing along the silken thread of her summons, he appeared in their office a few moments later. Just as he started to materialize, he remembered his promise and let out a soft whistle.

"Here I am, Scully," he said as he carefully materialized several feet away and in front of her.

She gave him a slightly suspicious stare that did not diminish when he flashed her a very innocent look. Mulder secretly enjoyed these silent interrogative exchanges. He knew she wasn't fooled by his little-boy-innocent look, but she got such an outraged-parent look in her eyes that he couldn't resist.

"I've been good. Well, reasonably, but I made sure I didn't leave any evidence," he hastened to add before he broke down and grinned at her alarmed expression.

"Mulder, you are incorrigible," Scully snapped. She didn't need any complications from Mulder's tendency to poke his nose in where it didn't belong.

"Scully, ghosts don't exist, remember? Unless I materialize right in front of someone no one is going to know. Believe me, it is to my advantage as well not to get caught. I won't put our partnership at risk, but I can't be tied down to mortal rules of behavior," Mulder argued, still smiling slightly. He didn't want to get into a real argument with Scully, but she was going to have to realize that she wasn't his keeper anymore.

Scully glared daggers at him until she finally, reluctantly nodded her head. Mulder had been on his best behavior all morning, she gave him that. She couldn't expect him not to take advantage of his situation. Then again, it was beginning to dawn on her that she wasn't answerable for his actions anymore. Yes, his penchant for getting into trouble no doubt survived with the rest of his personality, but there would be no more trips to the hospital, extended verbal flayings from Skinner or even the constant worry if he was going to come back from one of his abrupt trips into the unknown without her. With a sudden shock, she realized she was nostalgic for those things which she had hated most about her partnership with Mulder. She glared at him again, for good measure, gratified to see him squirm just a trifle.

"OK, Mulder. But if you spook someone bad enough to prompt an investigation, I'm going to make you wish you had chosen a nice damp, abandoned house to haunt. Am I making myself clear, mister?"

"Loud and clear, Scully," Mulder replied, still smiling but letting his eyes grow serious. Unexplained phenomena, of which he was now one he realized with pride, occurring too frequently in the FBI building could prompt some very uncomfortable inquiries from certain quarters.

The phone rang. Absently Mulder reached for it but stopped when he felt Scully's hand pass through him to pick up the receiver. He retreated, muttering.

"Agent Scully," Scully answered as she flexed her hand trying to warm it up again.

"Hello?"

Mulder tensed as he heard the loud click of a severed connection. His paranoia kicked in as he tried to calculate the odds of a wrong number. 

Scully looked puzzled for a minute then shot Mulder a steely suspicious look. Mulder froze as he tried to think what on earth she could be blaming him for.

"One of your phone buddies from the phone lists that you don't belong to, Mulder?" Scully was torn between amusement and exasperation.

"Scully, do you honestly think I would be stupid enough to give them my work number, providing of course that I would have any reason to give them a number at all," Mulder protested. He started chuckling as he considered the near panic he could have caused the various sex-call-in services he occasionally patronized if they had traced his number back to the FBI. Missed opportunities, he chastised himself in between chuckles.

"I think I'll plead the Fifth on that point considering all those videos I found that weren't yours," Scully retorted. Mulder controlled his chuckles and shrugged, trying for the much-maligned look in his repertoire. Scully merely shook her head.

Mulder left the slides and began amusing himself by sorting through the piles of inter-office memos that had been accumulating since his untimely demise. 

_Nothing is more certain than death and taxes than government paperwork._

He sensed slight shift in air currents as the door began to open a moment before Scully caught the snick of the door handle being turned. He was already fading into thin air as Scully's hiss sped him on his way.

_Damn! Scully is going to have to put a 'knock before entering' sign up or we're in deep trouble._

Scully resolutely turned her attention to the door, trying to keep from glancing over where she had last seen Mulder to make sure he was not visible.

"Agent Scully?" a soft authoritative whisper preceded A. D. Skinner through the door.

"Sir?" Scully was caught off-guard and nearly stuttered. She wouldn't have been surprised by a visit from Cancer Man, except that she figured she would have smelled him long before she heard his approach, but Skinner?

Skinner edged into the office and carefully shut the door behind him, easing the door closed without a sound. "I am not here, Agent Scully, and this conversation is not taking place, do I make myself clear?" 

"Clear as London in a fog," Mulder muttered quietly from the chair in the corner. Here he was far enough away from Skinner to avoid any accidental encounter, but close enough to feel part of the conversation.

Scully swallowed her questions and an urge to tell Mulder to shut up and nodded. The weight of paranoia bequeathed her by long association with Mulder kept her silent and wary. She saw a tangled web of deceit and obfuscation looming in front of her. Perhaps her grand idea of carrying on their work wasn't such a bright idea after all. Conspiracies gave her a headache and she felt a real migraine coming on.

"In half an hour you will *not* be here to receive a call summoning you to my office to receive notification that a new partner is being *assigned* to you." Skinner paused to see if Scully was following him. She nodded again. While she might not understand what exactly was going on, she sensed the deadly serious intent behind Skinner's words. Remaining silent, letting Skinner have his say, seemed the wisest course. Only when she had all the data would she make any comment.

"Damn it! I'm not even decently buried and Cancer Man can't wait to sic a spy on you. Congratulations Scully, you've hit the big time," Mulder commented sarcastically. Skinner's role in this game was unclear, but Mulder sensed he was acting without orders, perhaps even against orders, to give Scully a fighting chance.

It was too soon. She wanted more time to get used to having the X-Files before even attempting to break in a new partner. A suspicion that Skinner was trying to exert subtle pressure on her to change her mind came to mind. Well, he'd learn a thing or two about stubborn, she vowed. She might still have doubts, but by God they were her doubts and weren't open to manipulation by anyone outside of herself.

"If the Acting Head of the X-Files Division however has already requested the assignment of a particular agent to be her partner, then I would be inclined to go with her preferences. It is the absence of a personal preference that seems to be at issue here." 

"And does the Acting Head of the X-Files have a preference, sir?" Scully finally found her voice and was pleased to find it was as level and noncommittal as Skinner's, though with a touch of ice.

"Take my advice, sir, and prepare to duck," Mulder warned as he got down from his perch and walked over to stand behind Scully. If his suspicions were correct, Scully was about to get a real shock. Skinner was a braver man that he had ever been. Being a ghost, he noted, hadn't really improved his desire to be on the receiving end of Scully's temper when she was backed into a corner. 

"I believe her preference will be clear once she has read this folder." Skinner offered her a personnel folder, his eyes focused on something in the far distance over her shoulder. Scully shifted ever so slightly, aware of Skinner's hesitation and unsure of the reason why. A chilling brush of fingers along her arm reminded her that she was not facing this alone. Controlling the urge to shiver, she relaxed and allowed some of her wary tenseness to seep away. 

Skinner sighed so softly that even Mulder was barely aware of it. Without another word he handed the folder to Scully. As she grasped it, he held onto it for a moment. Scully raised her eyes to his in mild surprise.

"Agent Scully, look beyond the obvious and I believe you will find that this agent meets *all* of your qualifications, especially the one involving trust."

Curiosity mixed with wary suspicion clouded Scully's eyes. Skinner was up to something. She took the folder, nodding once to acknowledge Skinner's final admonishment. Moving with slow deliberate care, she opened the folder, curious about this mystery candidate Skinner seemed determined to make her partner.

Oh my God!" Scully's voice shook with shock. 

Skinner sighed again, audibly this time. This was not going well, a thought echoed by Mulder who knelt by Scully's side trying by touch and voice to persuade her to cooperate with Skinner's effort to protect her.

"Scully, listen to me. You said you didn't blame him. Please, this is important. Skinner is trying to help you." Mulder's quiet pleas rattled Scully. She twisted in her chair, glaring at the empty space beside her. 

Scully resisted the sweet temptation to tell Mulder to go to Hell and take Skinner along with him. Yelling at thin air would more than likely get her several mandatory sessions with a staff psychologist. She wasn't insane - angry at Mulder for not warning her, furious with Cancer Man for precipitating Skinner's preemptive move and furious with Skinner for forcing her to make a decision she wasn't ready to make yet.

"Are you seriously suggesting that I take as my partner the man who is directly responsible for Mulder's death, *sir*?" 

The sarcastic bite on the last word was not lost on Skinner. He winced, a barely noticeable narrowing of the eyes, as he continued to maintain a calm, sternly professional outward appearance. This was not an unexpected storm. If she could come through the initial fury to see what he saw in young Ambercrombie then he could forestall the impending disaster being orchestrated by her enemies.

"I am merely commenting on a *wise* choice by the Acting Head of the X-Files, Agent Scully. The individual in question is his own man, not part of any agenda, an excellent choice as her new partner." Skinner's voice turned cold, communicating a deadly warning of matters running out of his control, "Now if you prefer to wait or find Agent Ambercrombie unsuitable, I'm sure a *suitable* partner can, and most likely will, be assigned to you by the end of the day." 

Scully seethed in silence. Glaring at the personnel dossier in her lap she realized she was gripping it so tightly her fingers were crumpling the crisp manila folder containing the life and career of a man she never wanted to see again. Unshed tears blurred the neatly typewritten words until all she could see was Mulder's body lying in the dust beside a gory white ball.

"Scully, you don't have a choice. I'm sorry. I didn't think that black-lunged bastard would move so fast," Mulder pleaded with her. He understood her anger. Scully never liked being backed into a corner. She liked to take the time to consider all possibilities before acting. Now she was being rushed on the most important issue of her new life by forces beyond her control.

Scully's hiss warned him to back off. He retreated back to his chair. Skinner flinched ever so slightly taking the hiss as meant for him. 

"Thank you, sir," Scully snapped with military precision "I would certainly hate to disagree with the *wise* decision of the Acting Head of the X-Files Division, but I would like to review the file before I put out the welcome mat." She stood up, putting the folder down on the desk as if it were some disagreeable piece of evidence. She glared at Skinner and then glanced pointedly at the door.

Skinner took the hint and left as quietly and inconspicuously as he had arrived. He had launched his preemptive strike. Now he could only wait and hope that good sense overcame the obvious strikes against Ambercrombie. Agent Drew Franklin was not someone he wanted to inflict on Agent Scully or on anyone else he cared about. The man had an impeccable record but left behind the intangible trail of a slug.

**********

Scully watched Skinner leave with a mix of frustration and impotent anger. She wasn't ready to consider another partner, especially Ambercrombie. 

"Damn it Mulder, did you know about this?" she snapped with more irritation than she intended. She wasn't really mad at Mulder but she was mad at the intangibles that were suffocating her and Mulder was convenient.

"Scully, let's take this discussion someplace else, please. Apparently you are the center of attention here today. As Skinner said, if you're here to receive his call, you'll be stuck with the rat the Cancer Man wants to give you." Mulder hazarded a small smile. "Besides, if someone should happen to come down to the basement and hear you talking to thin air, you'll be on mandatory psychological leave."

Scully glared icily in his general direction. Well, at least I have her undivided attention, Mulder thought as he wondered if this was really a good thing.

"If it will get you moving any faster, no, I did not *know*, but I suspected that Ambercrombie was being considered. Now can we leave?" Mulder felt exasperated. This whole thing was not his fault. He didn't ask to die.

"Sure, fine, whatever." Again the flat statement, words clipped and angry. Scully knew her anger was irrational, but Mulder had held out on her, had once again kept her in the dark to protect her. _Damn it, I am tired of his bullshitting over-protective attitude. He could have warned me._

Dismayed by the anger she had held in for four years and now threatened to burst loose, Scully gathered up her things and marched out of the office. Long years of burying her emotions kept her face impassive as she strode through the FBI building and out to her car. Wary of the incandescence of her anger, Mulder made no effort to touch her.

"I'm sure you can find your own way to my place, Mulder. I would really prefer to drive without an iceberg sitting next to me. Especially one who let me be blindsided by Skinner's little plan." Even as she spat the bitter words at him, Scully felt a twinge of regret. Mulder did not deserve that. Well he did, but not right now. He did not deserve to have all his past sins raked up to stoke the flames of her anger.

"Mulder?" she started to apologize, to explain, then realized she could no longer sense him. The air in the parking garage was hot and humid, without any trace of the chill that marked Mulder's presence.

*********

3:30 p.m. Scully's Apartment

The drive home did nothing to relieve her anger. Washington traffic on a sunny hot July afternoon was clogged with tourists trying to find their way around and natives trying to escape the city's heat. Her normal commute of half an hour tripled. Preoccupied by her anger and the traffic, she never noticed the tan Explorer following her at a discrete distance. By the time Scully reached the tranquil calm of her neighborhood street, she was ready to spit nails. The Explorer slid effortlessly into a parking space on the street across from her apartment.

Mulder sensed her angry approach before her key hit the lock and took the prudent course - he stayed invisible. Listening to her swear at the idiot motorists, at Skinner and last, if not least, at himself, persuaded him that invisible was safer. In stunned disbelief he listened to Scully use words he was fairly sure her father hadn't known. Considering the intensity of her anger, he would really have liked to have disappeared completely from the vicinity, but he had promised Scully he wouldn't run away from their confrontations and he intended to keep that promise. 

Scully slammed her briefcase down on the coffee-table and stormed around the room. Mulder noted uneasily that his name came up rather frequently in her profane opinions of this absurd choice being foisted on her. This was a side of Scully he had never seen before, never even suspected existed. Was he responsible for the birth of this frustrated rage that was consuming his rational, cool-headed Scully? Doubt began to gnaw at his belief in the rightness of his plans for their future.

Mulder had to move quickly to stay out of her way. She was throwing off enough sparks to ignite him like a moth. Just keeping his ectoplasm from scattering in twenty different directions for shelter was a major task. Until she calmed down, he didn't want to venture a materialization. He wasn't entirely sure he would make it in one piece. While it was amusing to consider a disembodied head floating in the air, he really doubted if Scully was in the mood for 'amusing' today.

"Damn you Mulder, where the hell are you? You were real big on promises not to run. I should have known better, damn self-centered bastard," Scully raged to the empty air in her living room. He should have warned her, given her time to prepare, but no he had to keep everything to himself as usual. Partners were supposed to back each other up. All of Mulder's faults came to bask in the fiery flames of her anger. By this time her anger had taken on a life of its own and existed quite outside the issues which sparked it. 

"I'm here where I've been since you told me to get lost back at the office. I wasn't aware that hearing my name used in a variety of curses and profanities constituted you calling me. I'll have to remember that," Mulder said in a calm even voice as he slowly materialized in front of the couch. He was holding a tight rein on his temper, determined not to be baited or enticed into trading verbal barbs with Scully. Her pain was a physical torment to him, tearing him apart until nothing was left but a memory.

A sound outside the door caught his ear and he froze, half materialized. Then, abruptly, he vanished. Scully's anger teetered on the brink of exploding before the worried look on Mulder's face registered. She was already reaching for her gun when Mulder yelled a warning and her door burst open.

Three hooded men, armed with air guns staggered into her living room. From the wild thrashing going on Scully suspected Mulder was somewhere among them being a 'pest'. 

"Freeze! FBI."

She was answered by a wild shot that sent her diving for cover. A hypodermic dart skimmed past her shoulder. Two of the men broke from the confused melee and advanced on her position. The third man seemed to be having a tug of war with thin air for his gun. His eyes were wild and he was swearing hysterically.

_Hell with this fight fair shit! I'm a ghost, damn it, I'll fight like a ghost!_

Concentrating for a moment to make sure he had the suitably gory effect he wanted, Mulder suddenly let go of the gun he was fighting for and materialized. The assailant staggered back then looked up and screamed as the partially decomposed body of a man dressed in a long bloody white T-shirt appeared right in front of him. 

"BOO!"

Losing all desire to assist his partners in crime, the man bolted for the door, screaming incoherent prayers to God and a couple of saints thrown in for good measure.

The apparition grinned and advanced on the two remaining assailants. One of the men heard the commotion and glanced over to see what the matter was. A dart flew through Mulder striking the door. The man gaped in horror, first at the apparition advancing on him, then at his useless gun. Throwing the gun at Mulder he tried to jump through the window. 

Scully winced as one of her assailants dove head first at the window and rebounded from the security bars. Mulder actually flinched at the sound of skull meeting iron with a solid meaty thunk. Vivid memories of his own skull shattering halted his menacing advance for a moment.

The remaining assailant held his ground and fired at Scully. One of the darts sliced a thin line across her arm, but the other landed in the muscle on her upper arm. Fighting a wave of dizziness, Scully fired and noted with satisfaction through the haze that the man dropped. 

"Scully!"

As she sank bonelessly to the floor she saw the apparition rushing towards her. Drugged and fading she was startled into horror, her mouth open in a silent scream as she recognized Mulder's panicked face behind the rotting flesh hanging from the skull. 

"Nooooo," she moaned as the room spun and she fell into blackness.

Mulder swore as he plucked the dart from her arm. At least she was alive. There was some advantage to being a ghost, he didn't have to check her pulse to know she was alive. He could feel her heart beating across the room. She was hurt, probably drugged, but he had no way to help her except to make her more comfortable where she lay on the floor.

He felt the man behind him dying and felt no pity. Then the air around him grew dark. Sensing danger he looked around and his eyes grew wild as he vanished.

Mulder looked on in horror as the spirit of the man she had killed spiraled out of its body and came after him. Black tentacles of evil and violence trailed behind him and threatened to engulf Mulder as well. 

"Damn you and the bitch both. I'll take you both to Hell! "

Mulder dodged the man's charge as he frantically sought some way to escape. Hand-to-hand combat rules seemed to have changed from the FBI's training manual. Here there were moves he didn't even pretend to understand. Unfortunately, he realized, some men sprang into ghosthood fully aware of the evil potential of their new existence. His opponent grinned sadistically as he reached out and stuck his hand into Scully's chest and squeezed. Scully gave a loud gasp and convulsed.

"NOOOO!" Mulder charged the man, barreling into him, enveloping him, forcing him away from Scully by sheer impact of will. Fueled by hate and the evil in his soul, the newly formed ghost was powerful, but ultimately no match for Mulder's insane attack. Ruthlessly expending all of his energy in a reckless berserk attack, Mulder battered the new spirit, shattering its hold on cohesion until all that was left was a thin wailing spiral of black smoke that fluttered briefly in the air before being sucked into the ground.

Lacking the strength to hold himself together, barely cohesive enough to be called a wraith, Mulder tried not to sink down after his late opponent. He had no desire to go where that spirit was heading. The eddy of its passage into Hell was strong and Mulder fought with all his dwindling strength to keep from getting pulled into the undertow. Desperate he reached out a hand to grasp Scully's hand and felt the warmth of her life-force anchor him to her. Finally the air settled down and Mulder was left floating in a gray haze, only partially aware of his surroundings.

Even unconscious, her mind felt Mulder's touch, sensed his desperate need and reflexively clenched her fist, certain somehow that he was reaching out to her for help. 

Gradually Mulder drew himself back together, drawing in the filaments of energy from the air around him, reknitting his shadowy form. Not daring to waste the energy materializing, he carefully scanned the room. Scully was moaning slightly in her drugged sleep, but seemed to be recovering. Just as a guess, he estimated that she was in the twilight realm between deep sleep and the waking world. It would have been long enough for the men to have overpowered her and done whatever it was they were supposed to do, but not long enough to seriously incapacitate her. Unpleasant speculations as to the purpose of their visit occupied his thoughts as he drifted over to check on the remaining assailant.

Using Scully's handcuffs, Mulder cuffed the man's hands behind his back. Exhausted by even the little effort it took to manipulate the cuffs, Mulder drifted back to sit by Scully and keep watch. There wasn't much he could do if another team attacked, but he vowed he would scatter his ectoplasm to the four winds before he'd let anyone touch her. 

An hour later, Mulder was beginning to feel better and Scully was twitching and mumbling as her eyes flickered open and shut. She was waking up and, from the tone of her mumbles, wasn't feeling very good. Mulder considered expending the energy to become visible, but decided unless she called him, he wasn't going to spend any more energy than he had to.

"Ooh shit," Scully moaned as a wave of nausea rippled up from her stomach to her throat as she tried to sit up. A pair of icy hands supported her until she could lean against the couch. She clung to the couch for several minutes until the tide of nausea receded into a vague uneasy dizziness.

"You OK, Scully?" 

"I'm fine, Mulder." _Yeah, sure. I'm drugged by God-only-knows what, my face is green and my floor is rolling like a fucking rowboat on the ocean. And if you believe that I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you._

"Don't lie to your friendly neighborhood ghost, Scully. You're paler than I am and that particular shade of green is not your color at all," Mulder quipped quite happy to remain invisible and out of range of the glare Scully shot him or rather tried to. Not being able to see the target was a serious handicap.

"Scully, I'm going to dial 911. Can you manage a groan or two for the nice policemen?"

If the groan she delivered was more curse than moan, Mulder felt sure even the tape wasn't going to be able to distinguish the words without serious analysis. He merely shook his head at the language she was using and left the connection open and the cell-phone by her side. Let the police make of the situation what they wanted. 

*********

The police arrived within minutes of her call. Two squad cars were already in the area handling a bizarre one-car accident about two blocks away. A Ford Explorer going roughly ninety-miles-per-hour had missed a curve and impaled itself in the living-room of a house killing the driver and giving the elderly occupant of the house the fright of her life, as well as a story that would insure her star billing at the senior center for days to come.

Scully was still groggy and barely coherent when they arrived, but managed to wave her ID at the persistent young policeman who kept telling her, in polite but patronizing tones, to let him take her gun and put it somewhere safe. As soon as Scully identified herself as an FBI agent, the police immediately notified their superiors and the FBI that they had a police-involved shooting - break out the paperwork and bring extra pens. 

For the next three hours Scully found herself in the middle of a three-ring circus. Medics arrived on the heels of the police and checked her over. Except for some residual dizziness and a mouth that felt like the bottom deck of the Ark, she was given the all-clear. The older medic advised her to drink plenty of fluids and eat a substantial dinner, but warned her she would probably feel like the morning after the night before until the last of the drug wore off.

Skinner arrived as she was giving a severely abridged account of the afternoon's events. Her head was spinning so hard that she had to concentrate to selectively edit her story to avoid mentioning that she had been assisted by the ghost of her dead partner.

"I assume the man tried to jump out of the window when I returned fire."

"No, I have no idea why he would choose the window over the door. I was rather busy at the time."

"I'm an FBI agent, yes I have enemies. No, I don't know either of these men."

At this moment, the other man woke up screaming about bloody ghosts coming for him. Even cuffed he thrashed around so violently that it took two policemen sitting on him to hold him still until the medics could sedate him. The police were not optimistic about getting a coherent statement from him.

As the police milled about her apartment, making sketches and comparing her statement with the evidence on the scene, Skinner took Scully aside.

"Are you all right?" Skinner's expression was stern, but his eyes showed his concern for her. 

"I'm fine, sir. Just dizzy and a little confused. I'm not working on anything right now that would justify this sort of attack, unless . . .." Scully looked up with dismay.

"Unless your resumption of the X-Files would be justification enough? I don't think so, Agent Scully. All indications I have suggest that there is no particular difficulty with you taking over the X-Files. You did miss a meeting this afternoon and it is well after the end of the day, in one sense. However, the end of a day is a relative term, don't you think, Agent Scully?" Skinner looked at her intently, letting his words sink in through the drugged haze, determined to bend, twist and mutilate the English language to give her a chance. There would be hell to pay, but he was determined he would be the one to pay it.

"Thank you, sir," Scully answered with a slight nod to let him know she understood and to thank him for giving her the extra time.

"Now, get some rest, Agent Scully. I want to see you in my office at 8 a.m. sharp tomorrow morning. As per your recommendation received today, I will be discussing the new agent assigned to the X-Files." Skinner finished brusquely and walked off to talk with the senior detective on the scene. Scully sank down in a chair and tried to sort out the confused web of deceit and counter-deceit closing in around her.

In the end, the police decided Scully was acting in self-defense to ward off an attack that seemed to have no motive, but which they would assume was a robbery gone awry. The body of the man she killed was wrapped up and removed. She would have to go down to the station sometime tomorrow to make a formal statement, but that was just a formality required by the demi-gods of paperwork.

*********

9:20 p.m. 

Scully leaned her head against the door as she shut it behind Skinner and the police. She was too tired to even contemplate moving yet her day wasn't even close to being over.

"Coast clear?" Mulder asked as he slowly materialized, looking clean and neat once again.

"All clear, Mulder," Scully replied wearily. It was part nine o'clock at night and she still had the problem of her new partner to consider before she could even think about resting. 

"Been doing some thinking while I was stuck out here. I think someone wasn't happy when you didn't show up for that meeting with Skinner. Guess you scare the hell out of them, Agent Scully," Mulder said lightly, trying to mask the worry that was consuming him.

"It's OK, Mulder. I know the dangers. I just wasn't ready for them to start up quite so soon." Scully tried to reassure him, but her tone came out sounding flat and tired.

Mulder looked at her, then through her and finally stared moodily off into space for a few minutes. Scully felt a gnawing fear that something had changed in him over the past few hours, something she wasn't ready to face.

"Maybe you better tell Skinner you'll take the Nashville job. Jyrcouski is a fine man, you'd like him." Mulder's shoulders moved as if he had sighed. His face was unreadable but his eyes reflected a sad resolution. 

"It's not fair for me to ask you to chain yourself to my problems. You'll only end up getting hurt. You came too damn close this afternoon. I don't want to lose you and I'd rather you didn't end up hating me." Mulder's voice was sad but strong. He stood quietly, shoulders slumping slightly. This was the right decision, for her. It was time he began considering what was best for her, past time in fact.

Scully stared at him, her eyes a translucent blue, frozen by surprise in crystalline sharpness. Whatever she had expected to hear coming out of his mouth, those words were not even close.

"Running away?" she asked sarcastically, suddenly frightened by Mulder's calm determination, by the sinking feeling that he believed that their relationship was not working. Fear gave her words barbs to tear his soul.

"No. Just trying not to be a 'selfish, arrogant bastard.' Were the words you used?" Mulder refused to be baited. He gave her a sad smile that spoke volumes of grief, loneliness and sacrifice. "Maybe I'm just now realizing how damn selfish I have been and how much better you'd be if I hadn't barged back into your life. You would have taken the position at Quantico and been acknowledged by your peers or gone to Nashville and shown them what a hell of a good field agent you are."

Scully opened her mouth and nothing would come out. Part of her wanted to deny his calm resigned acceptance of guilt and responsibility for her anger and the aborted attack on her in her own home, part of her wanted to tell him he was dead-on right. Caught on the razor's edge of conflicting emotions, she froze.

"Scully this afternoon, I couldn't protect you . . ." Mulder sounded ashamed, almost apologetic.

"Mulder you did help me. You kept one man occupied so only two of them could come at me, then took out the second man. From where I stand you did a pretty good job, partner," Scully retorted. 

Mulder shook his head, denying her absolution. He knew what he had to do. If she wouldn't accept Ambercrombie, he had to convince her to take the Nashville offer or, at the very least, to go back to the safety of Quantico, away from the conspiracies that would kill her to stop her from carrying on their work. Fear spurred his powers of persuasion.

"Scully, Ambercrombie is a good man. He had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I've tried hating him, but I can't. God, can you even begin to understand the load of guilt he's carrying?" Mulder paused for a moment as his eyes faded into hollow pools of darkness. Scully shuddered as shadows of horrors barely glimpsed and beyond her darkest nightmares flickered in those depths. Mulder saw her shudder and quickly turned away, veiling his eyes and returning to face her only when they were once again the familiar hazel eyes of a friend.

"Sorry, Scully. There are things to being dead that you are better off not knowing. I can see Ambercrombie's guilt weighing him down. The guilt I carry for my sister is nothing compared to his. Deep down, I suppose I realize that I was only twelve and was facing something beyond even a man's ability to fight. Ambercrombie has no such escape clause. He bears a man's guilt for a man's deed however accidental it was."

Scully cleared her throat as she took in deep calming breaths. "If you are so keen on sending me to Nashville, why plead Ambercrombie's cause?" Curiosity was a safe middle-of-the-road emotion, helping her steer the perilous course between fear and need.

"Perhaps because I can't help wanting you to stay. Can't help being that 'selfish bastard' you ranted about earlier. I don't know anymore. I just know that I want you to be safe and I don't think that involves the X-Files and me," he concluded sadly. 

 

"Yet despite what happened here this afternoon, despite everything, I am selfish enough to want you to carry on with what we started, to fight these bastards, to let me be part of your life. But if you are only staying out of loyalty to me or out of pity, then you need to reconsider. Nashville isn't so bad, if you can overlook the lack of good barbecue. It does have a very excellent German restaurant with a superb microbrewery," Mulder added with a knowing smile. Their arguments over beer had occupied many a long dreary drive.

"Damn it, Mulder," Scully began, perhaps a bit more sharply than she intended. Her earlier anger over being forced into a corner was diminished, not gone. Fighting for her life had scattered most of it, but a residual resentment at the way her life was being manipulated by others still simmered restlessly just under the surface of her weariness. Much of her anger had been due to surprise, shock that Skinner would place her in such close working relationship with a man who every day would remind her of Mulder's death. Maybe Mulder should have warned her, but she did understand the reason he didn't. After all, considering her extreme reaction, how would she have been able to explain to Skinner how she knew who he was planning to suggest?

"Right now I want to take a shower and wash off every memory I have of tourists and masked assailants. When I am feeling human again, we can talk about Ambercrombie, Nashville breweries and the future like two calm rational adults."

"How about one calm rational adult and one rather frazzled ghost?" Mulder asked plaintively. He did look rather fuzzy along the edges, Scully noted with dismay. 

"Are you OK?" she asked concerned, though not entirely certain what she could do if he wasn't.

"Sure, just add to that list of things we have to talk about sometime the effect your Irish temper has on my ectoplasm," he answered with a tired groan. He wasn't even going to mention the residual effects of fighting another ghost.

"Go invisible, get some rest or whatever it is you do, Mulder. I plan on being in that shower at least a half an hour." Scully disappeared into her bedroom. "And stay out of the bathroom," she shouted back.

"Spoilsport."

**********

When Scully emerged from her room over an hour later, Mulder handed her a frosted mug of lemonade and a large roast beef sandwich on rye before retreating to his perch on her computer table. There was some advantage in being an iceberg he reflected with amused satisfaction. The startled look on Scully's face was well worth the effort he'd spent on getting the mug frosted without shattering it. 

"Thanks, Mulder. You *do* come in handy." Scully acknowledged his gesture with a salute followed by a deep swig of the lemonade. The crisp tart lemonade cooled her throat clear down to her stomach. Mulder seemed to have developed a knack for doing the unexpected right thing at the right moment or maybe it was just that she had never taken the time to notice before. 

The glass shards under the window had been cleaned up, a plastic tarp was taped over the broken window and another tarp had been placed over the bloodstain on her carpet. Mulder had been busy. Scully shot him a grateful look. She had been dreading the cleanup. This was her home, damn it! They had no right to make her afraid in her own home. She was angry again, her eyes glaring. Mulder flinched slightly wondering what sins of his she was contemplating. Scully saw him flinch and relaxed, giving him a reassuring smile. 

"Bribery just might get you places you never expected to be, Agent Mulder," Scully teased with just a slight lift of her left eyebrow. She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing as Mulder turned a smoky transparent. This could get to be fun; payback for all the innuendoes Mulder had showered her with that she had forced herself to ignore.

"Promises, promises," he retorted, gratified to see a faint blush darken Scully's cheeks. Two could play at this game, at least as long as Scully believed she knew the rules of the game. Mulder did not intend that she should ever learn that there were rules she wasn't even aware of. This fair exchange of innuendoes and light sexual teasing delighted him, almost made him forget he was dead, and certainly was amusing Scully.

"Do you feel up to discussing life, the universe and Ambercrombie?" Mulder quipped.

"Probably not, but as I recall, Skinner did say I better make my preference official by the end of today before the Smoking Man elbowed me out of the equation," she said as she sat down on one end of the couch. She took a large bite of the sandwich and carefully chewed it to give herself time to consider Mulder's arguments.

"You do realize you would probably be a thousand times better off taking the job offer at Nashville or even Quantico? I'm not going to argue on their side. Hell, after this afternoon you would have to be blind not to see the advantages of taking Skinner up on either offer." Mulder slid down from the table, paced around a bit, realized he was standing in the middle of her couch and deliberately walked back to the computer table and sat back down. "Sorry, I have a tendency to pace while I talk. Until I can remember not to walk through your couch, I'll try to stay in one spot." Mulder looked sheepish. 

Scully nodded gratefully. She wanted her wits about her for this discussion, not wandering off having hysteria because her friend and partner was standing in her furniture.

"Mulder, I want to keep the X-Files open. Not just because they are your legacy, but because I think I can prove to the FBI that they serve a useful purpose in tackling crimes no one else has a clue how to handle. You were right. We often came to different conclusions, but we solved the case and sometimes even got to lock up the criminal." Scully let some of her secret pride in the work they had accomplished shine through. Mulder needed to know she wasn't staying just for him.

"And whoever planned this afternoon's little game badly miscalculated. Whatever doubts I had before about taking on the X-Files are gone. I'm not letting that chain-smoking SOB chase me away. A Scully has never run from a battle before and I am not going to be the first. They want a fight, they'll have a fucking fight," Scully snapped. 

Mulder heard the roar of an enraged tiger behind her words and silently prayed he could keep up with her. _Scully's mad - God help us all._

"In other words, Agent Scully wants a challenge. Prove the X-Files were more than 'Spooky' Mulder's paranoid obsessions?" Mulder said, twisting the conversation slightly, trying to ease her anger against the men responsible for the assault on her home to the point where she could make a rational judgment, not an emotional one. That ball must have really jarred my brains - now I'm the rational one, Mulder chuckled to himself. His amused smile caught Scully's attention and she stared at him, silently demanding an explanation.

"When you take on a challenge Scully, there's nothing halfway about it." Mulder gave her an approving grin. "Personally I think if you took the Nashville job, Jyrcouski would be looking over his shoulder sooner than he thinks he would."

"Why play catch-up to someone else when I've got an entire division, albeit only a small one, to play with?" Scully retorted.

"So, you want the X-Files, but Ambercrombie is the problem?" Mulder wanted to make sure he understand the foundation he had to work with before he began his arguments. 

"That more or less sums it up. Nashville is an extremely attractive offer, but I'm not sure I want to go back to playing office politics, even under someone who doesn't automatically think my ex-partner was a certified nutcase." 

"Thanks, I think," Mulder replied uncertainly.

Still restless, he got up and carefully picked his way around the furniture until he was sitting on the coffee table facing Scully. He would have liked to have touched her, to reaffirm their connection for this next part of his argument, but decided she didn't need to be distracted by the shivers.

"Mulder, how can you or Skinner for that matter think I can successfully work with a man responsible for killing you? I keep seeing you stretched out in the dust every time I look at his file. I'm not sure I want to know what I'll see if I have to work with him every day." Scully's voice softened until it was barely above a whisper. Her mind was rebelling against what her eyes were saying. She was sitting in her living-room talking to Mulder about his death.

"It does get rather complicated doesn't it. I mean, I'm here, but I'm not here." Mulder leaned over and rested a hand on her knee. He wanted her to know the important part of him was here, however much he might have changed physically, his spirit and soul had come back to her. 

Scully barely flinched at the coldness of his touch. He looked impossibly young and alive still dressed in the light jeans and T-shirt he died in. Her mind and her heart were once again fighting the war between rational science and the extreme possibility that was sitting in front of her. Scully felt the reassurance of his physical presence along with the biting chill of his touch and felt rational science yield the field to her heart. 

"Look at me Scully. Our partnership didn't die that afternoon. See beyond that moment to what we have now. It won't be easy. Ambercrombie is tearing himself apart with grief. I think the only thing holding him together is a whispered promise from Skinner that he would find a way for him to atone. You're his atonement," Mulder finished with an ironic twist to his smile.

"I'm what?" Scully barked. _Of all the . . ._

"Look at it from Skinner's point of view. He has Cancer Man breathing down his neck wanting to assign you a partner, a spy sent to discredit you - sound familiar? I really doubt if he'll make the same mistake twice and assign anyone he doesn't own right down to his soul. He has Ambercrombie, a fine young agent, two years out of the Academy and apparently destined to be the newest Golden Boy of the Violent Crimes section until a week ago. Now they're making book on how soon he's given mandatory psychological dismissal." Mulder fell silent for a moment, his eyes clouded with memories.

"I was him, Scully, after Patterson got through with me. The best odds gave me six months before my permanent address changed to a rubber room. Instead I found the X-Files, perhaps not that big a change according to some people, but they saved my sanity. I think they can do the same for Ambercrombie," Mulder said in a soft whisper.

"How do you know I can trust him? Above and beyond the fact that he may feel an obligation to me, why should I trust that he'll be able to watch my back, that he can be taught to recognize the signs of conspiracy that you've taught me, that he is even capable of keeping up with me on a case?" Scully listed her objections in a calm rational tone. She was determined to make her judgments on the facts not her emotion-laded memories.

"I think you can trust him a hell of a lot more than anyone else Skinner might have to assign. Ambercrombie can't be bought, at least as far as your safety is concerned. He sees you as the one salvation for his soul. Of course, you might have a small problem with over-protectiveness, but then I'm sure you've never had to worry about that before," Mulder teased.

"Well, he's young so maybe he can be trained easier than the older model I had to work with before," Scully shot back. Mulder sputtered for a moment before holding up a hand in a fencer's acknowledgment of a hit.

"Touche. Ambercrombie is smart, very competent and relatively open-minded about the unknown. You might check out his academic background; very unique for an FBI agent. He took a fair amount of teasing about it at the Academy." Mulder sat back and smiled at her with one of those frustrating know-it-all smiles that drove her up the wall.

Scully glared at him, engaging in a brief battle of wills before she realized he wasn't going to cough up the relevant information.

"Damn you, Mulder," she said good-naturedly as she got up and retrieved Ambercrombie's folder from her briefcase. What was so unusual in the man's background to spark this kind of amusement from Mulder?

Scanning the personnel history Scully was pleased to note his consistently high performance marks as an agent. Coupled with his ranking among the top 15% of his class at the Academy and she began to feel more confident about his qualifications. He had a Master's in Criminal Justice, good, very good in fact. Wrote his thesis on creating profiles to predict criminal behavior patterns using forensic evidence combined with psychological and paraphysical profiles. Scully's eyebrows shot up.

"Interesting idea for a thesis. Not quite as original as rewriting Einstein, but the kid has promise," Mulder teased.

Scully opened her mouth to retort, then abruptly shut it again. She began reading Ambercrombie's resume in very careful detail. Mulder leaned back and watched her brow furrow and her eye twitch as she scanned the history of the man Skinner was conspiring to make her partner. Mulder wished he had known Ambercrombie better. Other than a brief consult on a case, he knew him only to speak to him. Ambercrombie shared his love of baseball and basketball and they had intended to get together for a few one-on-one games but their schedules never seemed to mesh.

"This is some kind of set-up, right?" Scully sounded slightly miffed, not quite irritated but getting close.

"No, Ambercrombie is the proud owner of a major in anthropology - specifically the anthropology of magic in folklore and religion and a minor in poetry. Oh, and you might also notice a heavy dose of courses in forensic anthropology." Mulder sounded like a fond uncle.

"Mulder . . ."

"The kid has an open mind as well as a brilliant one. Enough grounding in hard science to keep up with your theories, something I'll admit I have a hard time doing, yet open enough to the fantastic to accept the possibility of the kind of *unusual* suspects we run across." Mulder leaned forward, pressing his case. "He was also a Boy Scout, which means if he says Scout's honor you'll probably be able to believe him," Mulder gave her a wicked grin. 

"He can't be real. This has got to be a set-up."

"Nope, I checked him out after I first met him. He was interested in the X-Files and you know me, anyone who shows an intelligent interest in my work, I suspect of ulterior motives. Ambercrombie is for real."

Scully put the folder down and rubbed her eyes. Part of her wanted to hate Ambercrombie, to find reasons to reject him, even if it meant the peril of accepting one of Cancer Man's minions as a partner. That part of her that saw Mulder die, that part that felt her heart shatter to lie in the dust with him - that part of her wanted Ambercrombie to fall short of her demanding criteria, to be a pale shadow of the partner to whom she had committed her trust and her honor.

Ultimately, after several minutes of introspection, it all came down to a fear that Ambercrombie would somehow begin to replace Mulder in that special place partners share. She didn't want to share that place with someone new, to give another the trust and friendship she knew partners had to share in order to function.

"Scully," Mulder interrupted quietly, brushing two fingers across the back of her hand. "I can't promise not to be jealous," he gave her a rueful smile. "I can try not to make an ass of myself about it though." The smile moved up into his eyes as he saw Scully's eyes roll in disbelief. "Well, I did say try. Scully, if you had been the one to die, I don't know if I would have been strong enough to even consider taking another partner. I'll still be here, we're still partners. Just give Ambercrombie a chance. He needs this chance. You both do. He can protect you in ways I can't. I think this afternoon proves that."

Scully continued to look doubtful as she tried to examine why she felt so reluctant to accept such a promising young agent as her partner. Mulder watched her and, with a newborn sensitivity to her doubts, he realized he had gone overboard on his sales job. Nothing halfway, that's the old Mulder motto, he chastised himself.

"Scully, I know Ambercrombie sounds too good to be true. He is good, but he has some really severe weaknesses; they just haven't had time to show up yet. So far everyone in Violent Crimes is so overwhelmed by his eclectic brilliance and his ability to reconstruct a crime scene that they're overlooking his weaknesses," Mulder paused as he tried to put into words what he had intuitively sensed when he met the young man. Scully waited patiently, curious about these hidden problems. Nothing overt had leaped out at her in his personnel file.

"Ambercrombie can reconstruct a crime scene better than anyone I've ever known, but he can't get inside the head of a perp. He understands human nature, but not inhuman behavior." Mulder's eyes turned a smoky green as he recalled his own trips into the abyss of psychotic minds. 

"As far as the X-Files are concerned, he has an even greater weakness. He is completely naive about conspiracy. I doubt if he even understands exactly what Skinner is pushing him into. He would have seen the assault today as just an attempt by some organized militia or drug lord to intimidate the FBI. I doubt if the smell of cigarette smoke means anything more than someone being stupid enough to choke their lungs with nicotine." Mulder gave a harsh bitter laugh devoid of any humor. Then he leaned towards Scully, his voice low and soft, almost regretful.

"You will be his guide, his teacher. You're getting a green young agent, a little like a certain green young agent who walked through my door four years ago, and your task will be to educate him enough to allow him to survive, to carry on our work."

Scully looked at him incredulously. Mulder's words blew away the fear that Ambercrombie was some sort of super agent she could never hope to match, let alone surpass, but replaced the fear with a dawning realization of what she was going to have to do to his illusions of a sane and rational world. She remembered her naivete four years ago and pitied Ambercrombie. Did they have the right to shatter his illusions? Could she face her guilt at transforming his innocence into the grim awareness of the nature of evil, be it human or inhuman? With a sudden flash of insight, she wondered, not whether Mulder had known that same guilt, but how he had borne it as well as he did?

There was a deep wrench as her perception of this proposed partnership shifted and she realized the weight of responsibility for another man's soul climb onto her shoulders and press down, hard. Mulder had endured its weight for four years, probably still felt it if she knew him half as well as she thought she did. 

She stared deep into his eyes searching for the truth behind his words and saw acceptance of his own guilt and the knowledge that his legacy to her involved an equal share of guilt passed onto her. His eyes clouded under her intense probing but he did not look away or try to turn aside her silent appraisal of the cost of accepting this burden. The guilt was a necessary price to pay for what they had accomplished.

Finally she sighed, surrendering to the inevitable, accepting the challenge Ambercrombie posed.

"All right, Mulder. I guess if I want the X-Files, Ambercrombie is a necessary accessory," Scully conceded. 

She walked over to the computer, absently avoiding the plastic sheeting covering the bloodstain on the carpet, and typed out her official recommendation for Ambercrombie's transfer to the X-Files. Before she could have second-thoughts, she faxed the request to Skinner's home computer. Eleven-ten - beat the bastard's deadline by fifty minutes, she boasted to herself, unsure which bastard she was referring to. Getting another glass of lemonade she returned to the couch and settled in comfortably. She was still too wired to sleep, though she knew she should try to get some rest before facing Skinner in the morning.

"Well, you put up with me for years, Scully. I'd say you've got a head start on coping with erratic partners. If Ambercrombie gives you any trouble, or worse if he's really a plant, he'll spend the rest of his life losing keys, dropping guns, tripping over invisible rocks, whatever else I can think of to make his life a living hell," Mulder promised earnestly as his eyes blended deadly intent and mischief.

"You would know, Mulder," Scully retorted remembering her partner's tendency to lose his grip on important personal accessories, like guns.

"Low blow, Scully." Mulder held up his hands in mock surrender while trying to look indignant. His mood changed on a dime again and turned serious.

"Scully, this will work because we'll make it work." Mulder started to get up, caught himself and plopped back down on the coffee table. "Maybe this is one of those things Gordon said I have to take care of before I can leave. I don't know, but I do know that if the X-Files are to continue, you need a living breathing partner. Ambercrombie is intelligent, competent, and, I believe, trustworthy," he paused, but with an somber expression that warned Scully he was finding the next words hard to say. "A new and improved model," he finished in a low, husky voice Scully had to strain to hear and wasn't sure she was supposed to hear.

Mulder sighed as he straightened up. Looking over Scully's head, far off into the distance, his eyes turned dark and dour. He remained silent. Pangs of jealousy tore at his determination to remain calm and detached. Scully was *his* partner. Part of him was afraid that she would soon learn to depend and trust someone else and gradually learn not to need him anymore. Good for Scully perhaps, but the closest thing to Hell on earth for him.

"Mulder?" The sudden shift in his mood tore at her heart. He looked so sad and lost, resigned to a fate beyond her understanding. Fear for him inflamed a need to protect him, to stand between him and whatever fate he saw in the darkness.

"It's nothing, Scully," he murmured, not looking at her.

"Bullshit, Mulder. Honesty, remember that word?" Scully sat up, until she could look him in the eyes, refusing to allow him to retreat, praying he wouldn't flee back to wherever it was that he spent his time when not visible.

"Just thinking."

She breathed a silent prayer of thanks. He wasn't running, yet, but she sensed his need to flee from her was balancing on a razor's edge against his promise not to run. She let her eyes ask the question, afraid to speak, uncertain of the words to say, afraid that she would say the wrong words and startle him into flight. He still wasn't looking at her, but she knew he was aware of her, he shook with his awareness of her presence.

"You have a chance now to work with a partner who isn't cluttered up with obsessions and quixotic quests." Silence, long painful silence finally broken by words torn out of him by his promise to be honest. "I guess I'm afraid." His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper as he began to fade, his face clouded with embarrassment and fear, fleeing to battle his fears alone in the dark as he had always done.

_Not this time, Mulder. This time I'm not letting you run._

Scully reached out and clutched his hand between both of hers, anchoring him to her. With her eyes alone she begged him not to run. Mulder shuddered as her hands began to pass through his, saw Scully give an answering shudder as she endured the cold of his touch, refusing to relinquish his hand. With a resigned shake of his head for stubborn partners, he re-materialized.

"Scully, it's OK, really. You know me, always one to snatch pessimism out of the jaws of optimism." Mulder managed a shy smile as he laid his other hand atop hers and squeezed.

"Mulder, you'll always be my partner, no matter how well Ambercrombie works out. I will always need you Mulder. If I didn't know that before last Saturday, I knew it when I thought I had lost you forever. I knew it this afternoon when we fought together again." Scully found her voice, letting the words come from her heart and even, perhaps, a little from her mind. Trying to reassure the little boy in Mulder who never quite believed in happy endings. 

"Trust me, Mulder." Her eyes flashed with laughter as she gently teased him. Trust, such a simple word that had such complex meanings for this very complex man.

"Always have, always will," Mulder replied with a soft laugh. His eyes answered her question with a promise. He would stay, embrace the pain of watching her bond with another partner, trusting in her promise that he would always be needed.

"Now that we have the matter of my partner and my future settled, can I ask a favor?" Scully's expression turned serious as she stared at him.

"Anything, Scully. Anytime," Mulder replied earnestly.

"Get the hell out of the middle of my coffee table!"

 

THE END


End file.
